Cambodian leader’s son set to take reins of power

Tens of thousands of supporters packed a central square in the capital before daybreak on Friday to hear the 45-year-old’s 7 am kick-off to the CPP’s final day of campaigning before the vote

Hun Sen has been Cambodia’s autocratic prime minister for nearly four decades, during which the opposition has been stifled and the country has grown increasingly close to China.

With his Cambodian People’s Party (CCP) virtually guaranteed another landslide victory in this Sunday’s election, it’s hard to imagine dramatic change on the horizon. But the 70-year-old former communist Khmer Rouge fighter and Asia’s longest-serving leader said he is ready to hand the premiership to his oldest son, Hun Manet, a graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point who heads the country’s army.

Tens of thousands of supporters packed a central square in the capital before daybreak on Friday to hear the 45-year-old’s 7 am kick-off to the CPP’s final day of campaigning before the vote. “Voting for the Cambodian People’s Party is voting for yourselves,” he told the cheering crowd, promising to return Cambodia’s national pride to a “greater level than the glorious Angkor era” of the Khmer Empire, centuries ago. With the only credible challenge to the CPP barred from participating in the elections on a technicality, Cambodians are being offered very little choice but to vote for the ruling party again.

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