No two leaders have been as poles apart as Thai Premier Abhisit Vejjajiva and his Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen. -- PHOTO: AFPBy Nirmal Ghosh, Thailand Correspondent
The Straits Times
BANGKOK - NO TWO leaders at the opening on Friday of the Japan-Mekong Leaders summit in Tokyo would have been as poles apart as Thai Premier Abhisit Vejjajiva and his Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen.
Prime Minister Hun Sen, 57, started his adult life as a teenage soldier with the notorious Khmer Rouge in the jungles of Cambodia, and through grit, opportunism and charisma clawed his way to the top of a fractured and bleeding country and has remained there for almost 30 years.
Thai Prime Minister Abhisit, 45, was born into privilege and educated in salubrious Eton and Oxford, excelled in polished intellectual debate, and became prime minister last December not through a popular election but through a parliamentary vote.
The blunt-speaking Hun Sen's easy, earthy style goes down well with Cambodia's rural masses. At the same time, the Premier is able to rub shoulders with the rich and famous in palaces and on golf courses.
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