Cambodia job offer sparks row

By Tim Johnston in Bangkok

Published: November 6 2009

(Posted by CAAI News Media)

Hun Sen, the Cambodian prime minister, seems to enjoy baiting his neighbours.

His recent decision to make Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand’s fugitive former prime minister and de facto opposition leader, an adviser to his government has caused a spat that regularly sounds more playground squabble than sophisticated diplomacy.

Thailand has accused Mr Hun Sen of interfering in its internal affairs, recalled its ambassador from Phnom Penh and instituted a review of all bilateral agreements.

“It is with regret that the Royal Thai Government must undertake such a review as it has always been the Royal Thai Government’s commitment to co-operate with Cambodia for the development of the Cambodian people’s livelihood and to narrow the gap between Cambodia and other Asean [Association of South East Asian Nations] member countries,” the Thai foreign ministry stated.

Relations between the two countries had already been strained by a border dispute near the 10th-century Preah Vihear temple that has sparked a number of shooting incidents in the past year.

Mr Hun Sen has a long-standing friendship with Mr Thaksin, a populist telecommunications billionaire who was ousted in a military coup in 2006 and subsequently sentenced in absentia to two years in prison for breaching conflict-of- interest laws.

The current spat is not the first time the friendship has provoked his neighbours.

When Mr Hun Sen arrived in Thailand last month for an Asean summit, an event normally characterised by more than usual doses of ersatz camaraderie, he managed to anger two association members by saying that Mr Thaksin was the victim of political persecution and comparing him to Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained Burmese opposition leader.

To be fair, the diplomatic slanging match has not all been one-sided. Earlier this year an old tape-recording emerged of Kasit Piromya, Thailand’s current foreign minister and a committed nationalist, calling Mr Hun Sen “a gentleman with the mind of a gangster”.

Mr Kasit’s explanation that he had meant to describe the Cambodian leader as “big-hearted” and “sportsman-like” and was a victim of mistranslation was greeted with some scepticism in Phnom Penh.

Thailand’s press has also jumped into the debate. Last week the English-language Nation newspaper published an editorial bluntly titled “Hun Sen shows lack of class and tact”. It pointed to his past as a Khmer Rouge cadre and his somewhat tarnished democratic credentials, among other perceived shortcomings.

That provoked a stinging rebuke from Cambodia’s ambassador to Bangkok.

“After reading your editorial, I must say that your newspaper has become a junky and vulgar news­paper. It has completely lost its value as a newspaper of a civilised country,” You Ay wrote in a letter published by the paper.

“What kind of a statement is it when you said, ‘You can take the man out of the jungle but you cannot take the jungle out of the man’? This is a great insult to our great leader, Samdech Akka Moha Sena Padei Techo Hun Sen. It is a gangster-like statement,” the ambassador added.