By Lauren Crothers
PHNOM PENH
Thirty years after he came to power, Cambodia's prime minister has announced his intention for his rule to continue into a sixth mandate.
Hun Sen has said he intends to stand at the helm of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party in the 2018 elections.
The Cambodia Daily on Thursday quoted him as saying in a recent speech that only his continued grip on power could ensure that the country is at peace.
“Hun Sen is working [as the prime minister] in the fifth mandate and Hun Sen will win in the sixth mandate,” he said, referring to himself in the third person.
“The CPP will win again. It is because [the CPP] wins that we can live in such comfort together.”
The CPP has not always won with "such comfort," however,
The July 2013 elections were fraught with tension and controversy, resulting in a disputed outcome, a significant loss of seats for the CPP, and a 10-month-long boycott of the seats won by the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party.
Since being initially elected at the age of 33 - making him at that time the world's youngest head of government - he has formed a reputation as a formidable and shrewd strongman - an image built upon decades of extrajudicial killings and the use of the judicial system to stifle voices of dissent.
His tenure has also presided over the 1997 grenade attack on an opposition march, in which 16 people were killed, as well as the January 2014 crackdown on garment strikes, during which five people were shot dead by military police forces.
In an email to The Anadolu Agency late Wednesday, Brad Adams, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, said Hun Sen’s latest remarks on his attempt to win a sixth consecutive mandate echo those of the past two decades.
“But he is living in the past, as there are no threats to Cambodia’s stability. The war with the Khmer Rouge has been over since 1998. Since he can’t use them as a target, he concocts a fantasy about a civil war with the opposition, which has always been entirely peaceful," Adams added.
"In my view, if there is anyone who is a threat to stability, it is Hun Sen, who is constantly using force, arrests and threats against people who are only advocating for democracy."
