Fri, Feb. 25, 2011
JOEL BRINKLEY
The Kansas City Star
COMMENTARY
In Cambodia, Hun Sen vows to remain in office until he is 90. He’s 58 now, and already no Asian leader has served as long — 26 years. Like Egypt, Cambodia holds faux elections, but Hun Sen recently declared: “I don’t just want to weaken the opposition, but to make it die.”
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In Cambodia, longtime dictator Hun Sen, like his fellow potentates around the world, watched the news and figured out his own strategy. He decided to give a speech and threaten his people.
“I would like to tell you that if you want to strike as in Tunisia,” he warned, “I will close the door and beat the dog this time.”
That was last month, and all has been quiet since. Don Jameson, a former State Department official who served in Phnom Penh, just returned from a long visit there and told me, “I judge that the chances of an uprising against the Hun Sen regime similar to those in Tunisia and Egypt are close to zero.”
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