A dispute involving relatives of Cambodia’s senior politicians could complicate or even derail Prime Minister Hun Sen’s long-planned dynastic succession while raising new questions about whether China actually supports the transfer of power.
The potential for game-changing political ructions is growing. According to sources familiar with the situation who requested anonymity, a family member of Defense Minister Tea Banh allegedly threatened one of Hun Sen’s relatives who was in line for a promotion within the defense ministry, a key conduit of Chinese influence in Cambodia.
Hun Sen, 70, is planning to hand power to his eldest son and the country’s current army commander, Hun Manet, who was accepted by the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) to be its future prime ministerial candidate in late 2021.
An in-law of Hun Sen had been tipped for a senior role within the defense ministry but a family member of Tea Banh instructed him not to take the position or suffer the consequences, the same anonymous sources said.
A threat was also allegedly made to the intimate family of Hun Sen’s relative, in what appears to be a dispute over future control of the ministry, the well-placed sources said.
It is believed that the dispute has now been sent to Hun Sen – who often provides extrajudicial arbitration over sensitive issues – to make a decision on how it should be handled.
Tea Banh, who has served consecutively as defense minister since the late 1980s, is believed to have been the last senior party official to publicly support Hun Manet as the CPP’s future prime ministerial candidate during negotiations in late 2021.
Several party veterans and grandees are known to harbor reservations about Hun Manet, potentially because of the consolidation of power by the Hun family, which threatens their own interests.
Hun Manet, 44, is the commander of the Royal Cambodian Army and deputy commander-in-chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces. He is also president of the ruling party’s youth wing and controls several charities aligned with the CPP.
Hun Many, another of Hun Sen’s sons, is a parliamentarian and runs the Union of Youth Federations of Cambodia. Another son, Hun Manith, was promoted to the rank of minister in December and runs the military’s intelligence service.
However, Tea Banh and Interior Minister Sar Kheng – both of whom are also deputy prime ministers – are thought to have been persuaded to tactically support Hun Sen’s succession plans, for now, after they received guarantees that their families would maintain control of their ministries and they could manage their own dynastic successions.
It is believed that Tea Banh’s son Tea Seiha, currently governor of Siem Reap province, is in line to become the next defense minister when his father retires. A “generational succession” has been promised to other senior party officials, whose children would inherit their ministerial fiefdoms.
Several implicit promises have been made, one analyst noted, “so people must be expecting the world. Everyone thinks they’re much more important than they are.” The analyst added that many of these promises are certain to be dashed, leading to complications in the succession plan.
However, another root of the dispute could relate to China, the “ironclad friend” of the Cambodian government and the country’s main patron, some sources contend.
Successive US administrations have alleged that Cambodia has signed a secret deal to allow Chinese forces exclusive access to its Ream Naval Base, a site of geostrategic importance as it is located near neighboring Thailand and Vietnam and could provide China with a southern flank in the contested South China Sea.
Both the Cambodian and Chinese governments have consistently denied the reports, despite Chinese firms being given the exclusive right to redevelop the base. A defense paper from the US Pentagon in November stated that “The PRC’s military facility at Ream Naval Base in Cambodia will be the first PRC overseas base in the Indo-Pacific.”
“China has hands in different places [in Cambodia], in different pots, and that’s how they keep factions happy,” says an analyst. “China has too much unhealthy power over factions, and China will try to play their hand to get concessions from all sides,” the analyst added.
Hun Sen met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing last month. Hun Manet was part of the entourage, as he was during his father’s previous meeting with Xi in early 2020.
“Hun Sen taking General Hun Manet to China obviously gives him a leg-up with Cambodia’s most important patron. Why aren’t other Cambodian princelings being allowed to see President Xi of China?” queried Sophal Ear, associate dean and associate professor at the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University.
But a diplomatic source told Asia Times that Beijing possibly does not think Hun Manet is fully on board and that the graduate of West Point, America’s elite military academy, might not be the Chinese government’s preferred successor to Hun Sen.
There are rising suggestions that the defense ministry is becoming the key conduit for much of Beijing’s influence in Cambodia, and that the Chinese government wants to maintain this ministry as a rival power base because of its lack of faith in Hun Manet, sources say.
Tea Banh’s brother Tea Vinh, Cambodia’s navy chief, was sanctioned by the US in late 2021 over “significant corruption” surrounding the Chinese-led redevelopment of Ream Naval Base.
Recent months have seen numerous media reports about Chinese-run human trafficking rings active in Cambodia and across mainland Southeast Asia, some allegedly tied to senior Cambodian officials.
Voice of Democracy (VOD), one of the country’s last remaining independent news outlets, was forcibly closed down on Hun Sen’s order last month after he alleged it had defamed his son by reporting he had signed a document for distributing earthquake aid to Turkey that apparently only the prime minister had the authority to sign.
Human Rights Watch noted that “VOD’s coverage of human trafficking of foreigners into cyber-scam operations controlled by influential Chinese syndicates with backing by senior ruling party officials have been particularly unpopular with the Cambodian government.”
Follow David Hutt on Twitter at @davidhuttjourno