Objetivos y políticas de la gestión de riesgos financiero

Shall we therefore call Sihanouk in his ninth incarnation the ‘King of dreams’? The slight difficulty about this epithet is that he has been constantly active as a political player who could not be ignored, even if to some extent he is malleable. When he returned from Peking in late August 1997 it was not to take up residence in Phnom Penh but at Siem Reap, close to Angkor. In a muted snub to the ruling interest, he spoke of his wish to be ‘far away from the politicians in

Phnom Penh’.28 Subsequently, after the international aid donors had brought pressure to bear on the ruling interest by stopping funds, and ASEAN by postponing Cambodia’s membership of the regional grouping, Hun Sen allowed preparations to go ahead for elections open to a plurality of competing parties. The King then played his part in reactivating democracy by granting an unconditional amnesty to Ranariddh for the ‘crimes’ for which he had been tried and sentenced. Ranariddh was thus able to return to Cambodia on 31 March 1998 and take charge of his party’s election campaign.29 And in this campaign, FUNCINPEC’s programme was characteristically distinguished from the other two main contenders (Hun Sen’s CPP and Sam Rainsy’s Khmer Nation Party) in terms of its slogan ‘Nation, Religion, King’.30 In spite of an unpublicized change in the system of proportional representation to favour the CPP, and this party’s heavy dominance over the media and all government agencies (including the National Election Committee which was supposed to investigate complaints of fraud and intimidation after the event, but never did), FUNCINPEC finished in second place (with forty-three seats to CPP’s sixty-four).31 Some foreign observers judged the elections (held on 26 July 1998) to be ‘free and fair’ – though the term is clearly a relative one, adapted to the circumstances of an endemically lawless and corrupted society in which even a modicum of procedural regularity comes as an agreeable surprise.32 If ever there is development towards a civil society from these minimal beginnings, Sihanouk may come to be praised for having maintained the vital shell of legality during the transition, however distasteful the short-term compromises.

But in the shorter term there can be no clear and agreed perspective. In the prolonged hiatus following the 1998 elections,33 both Prince Ranariddh and Sam Rangsi refused to talk coalition politics with CPP until accusations of widespread electoral fraud had been investigated. The opposition staged prolonged demonstrations on the streets of Phnom Penh and in front of the parliament building. At the height of the tension the two opposition leaders ‘fled’ abroad, or sought refuge (Sam Rangsi) in UN premises in Phnom Penh, ‘for their safety’. Whether or not their fears were genuine, it brought pressure to bear on the interest (CPP) controlling the organs of the State – not by shaming the thick- skinned Hun Sen into guaranteeing security to the opposition, but by making international aid donors withhold their aid, and the UN continue to keep the Cambodia seat vacant, and ASEAN refuse membership, until at least a semblance of ‘democracy’ was restored. It was a remarkably hard-nosed and intransigent power play on Hun Sen’s part, considering that constitutionally, he needed a two-thirds majority in the Assembly in order to confirm the next Cabinet in office – which would seem to necessitate a coalition with FUNCINPEC in any case. At all events, it finally transpired that Prince Ranariddh was prepared to ‘compromise’ on the basis of a similar power- sharing arrangement as before, but letting Hun Sen be sole Prime Minister (and not insisting on investigation of alleged electoral fraud), provided that Ranariddh himself could be Chairman of the National Assembly. Under the existing Constitution, the holder of this office would serve, of course, as Acting Head of

Cambodia 97 State in the absence of the King. And this is what indeed occurred for several weeks after King Sihanouk left Cambodia for medical treatment in Beijing, in late November 1998, as soon as the crisis was over. Sam Rangsi had been left out in the cold by the final, horse-trading ‘summit’, conducted under King Sihanouk’s chairmanship at his Palace in Phnom Penh.34

This outline of the post-elections crisis forms a necessary background for considering the role of Sihanouk. At first he seemed to be playing the national mediator par excellence, standing above party. He urged a tri-partite coalition, to include Sam Rangsi. But the decisive ‘summit’, to which Sam Rangsi was not invited, manifestly went ahead because a deal had been crystallizing between the two main parties. Not long before the first ‘summit’, of all three parties, held in September 1998 in Siem Reap, the caretaker government was proposing a Constitutional Amendment which would involve the King in forming govern- ments without the need for a two-thirds vote in the Assembly, while also making some new arrangement for choosing Sihanouk’s successor after his death. Already on the eve of this summit government sources expressed the opinion that the King had been letting the crisis grind on so that he could break the paralysis by forming a government himself. Any observer who recalls Sihanouk’s withdrawal to Battambang during his campaign for Independence might be tempted to see a parallel in his self-imposed rustication to Siem Reap. Was he not possibly manoeuvring to restore some of his diminished leverage, on behalf of the monarchy as an interest in its own right? Two events are germane. First, the breakthrough came immediately after the caretaker government had failed to organize crowds to honour the King and the occasion when he lit the flame at the Independence Monument in Phnom Penh on the Forty-fifth Anniversary of Independence. And, second, just after the ending of the crisis, and after Sihanouk had left on his delayed trip to Beijing for a medical check-up, there was news of the drafting of yet another Constitutional Amendment, drawn up by ‘constitutional experts of CPP and FUNCINPEC’, to allow the King to abdicate. This mechanism would activate the Throne Council to select a successor within seven days in the same way as his death would do (but while Sihanouk was still alive and putatively able to influence the decision).35 Do we detect, in this shadow play, a pattern of veiled warning not to rate his national influence too high, combined with indulgence towards Sihanouk’s own interest and whims whenever he lowered his sights and yielded to the minimum demands of the party wielding power?

Of course, it is also tempting to speculate whether Sihanouk was himself part of the FUNCINPEC power-play, but either did not wish to appear blatantly partial, or hoped that by prolonging the crisis he could increase his leverage as King into the bargain. Yet, just because FUNCINPEC is the ‘royalist party’ it does not follow that Sihanouk is Ranariddh’s man. There were contrary straws in the wind in early 1999. For instance, in February the King denied that he wanted his wife or his son Sihamoni to succeed him – a sure sign that well- informed observers thought this was indeed what was on his mind and close to his heart, as in 1995.36 Much more significantly, in April the King appointed his

son Prince Chakrapong as his ‘senior adviser’. Chakrapong had re-emerged at the FUNCINPEC Congress in March – but not as an office-holder. We will recall that it was he who played the part of would-be secessionist leader in 1993, with Sihanouk’s suspected connivance, in order to force the elections victor, FUNCINPEC, into a ‘shotgun marriage’ with CPP. On being appointed to his father’s staff, he stated that he would ‘try to restore the image of the party’ (FUNCINPEC)!

That Sihanouk has consistently played Hun Sen’s game, not Ranariddh’s, since 1995, is asserted unequivocally from at least one quarter among the anti- royalist liberal opposition.37 Further, a wide-ranging essay of modern political history sees Cambodia as run by two contrasted but symbiotically matched groups: ‘the royalists, cynical, irresponsible, anti-democratic’, and ‘the barbaric and criminal Khmer Rouge’.38 It is not stated that Sihanouk, as King, is actively identified with his own political creation, FUNCINPEC. But it is implied that he is favourable towards it on condition of its cynical collaboration with the ruling interest, the ‘Khmer Rouge’, with which he allied at the time of his overthrow in 1970. Noticeably, the essayist makes no distinction between the Khmer R ouge led till early 1998 by Pol Pot, and the branch originally under Vietnamese sponsorship, led by Hun Sen. But this is precisely why, in this way of thinking, it is possible to see Sihanouk as formally detached from FUNCINPEC, yet simultaneously its objective supporter: he supports anyone who is ‘a friend of his old friend’! While we might disagree that Sihanouk has stayed literally loyal to ‘the Khmer Rouge’ across all these years, the powerful thread of truth in the analysis relates to his consistency as a schemer in his own interest – a reliable compass, at all times since his deposition, to the locus of power.

It is surely only a King with a keen instinct for his own survival who could have played the improbable part of constitutional monarch to an ex-Communist ‘mafia regime’, and with such success. Hun Sen, too, has played the part of a deferential Premier with finesse, travelling all the way to Beijing to deliver governmental reports and pay homage, even though under the Constitution the King formally ceases to be Head of State when absent from Cambodia. Each knows what he most basically needs from the other. Hun Sen sustains the monarchy, contrary to his more youthful, Communist principles; Sihanouk delivers neo-traditional legitimacy to the Cambodian People’s Party, contrary to the monarchism he fought for until 1970. Arguably, this symbiosis has become a central dynamic of the current political system. The power of the monarchy has gone, but the ‘ex-Communist mafia’ is not confident enough to rule purely by force. Thus it is constrained to tap the legitimizing resource of a neo-traditional institution,39 as well as building a coalition with the party that is more explicitly identified with it. This gives to Sihanouk, at least for what remains of his mortal life, a new lease of life in a political sense.40

Indeed, by playing his cards very carefully whenever there is a political hiatus and opportunity for mediation, he actually generates a little more power for his office than he was able to exercise during the dark days of his exile, as a Khmer Rouge puppet. Nevertheless we should probably conclude, tentatively, that the

Cambodia 99 Cambodian monarchy has little chance of a prolonged existence after Sihanouk. The traumatic upheaval of the Khmer Rouge revolution and Vietnamese occupation are facts. The successor society is a warlord society, with scant law and order. The restoration of the monarchy in this situation was a case of grasping at a straw of continuity. The element of cunning in Sihanouk’s political make-up that has made him, in the past, alternately a great achiever for the nation and a tragic disaster, enables him to contribute something in his ninth and last incarnation as a ‘pseudo-constitutional monarch’. His pursuit of self-interest has not prevented him from developing a fruitful and functional relationship with the ex-Communist Premier: on the contrary, the two seem to have discovered a mutual affinity.41 But no successor will be able to offer the same combination of legitimizing personal prestige and lubricating political finesse (infused and informed by self-interest!) to Hun Sen or his successors. The Cambodian throne is ‘a space to watch’ – with the brooding expectation of a permanent vacancy before very long.

7.1

A shaky symbiosis

At the end of the discussion of monarchy in Malaysia, in Chapter 3, we met cases of increasing assertiveness on the part of some of the Sultans (the rulers of the nine Malay States of the Peninsula). This was in the period following the passing of special laws to strengthen Malay rights, from which the Sultans benefited, as ‘protectors’ of the Malays who themselves needed protection. Part of the special interest of the monarchical politics of Malaysia lies in the fact that a traditional institution, kept in being essentially for passive legitimization, has shown a capacity for strengthening its role and even posing challenges to the more modern political sector which it is supposed to serve. This has occurred despite the federalistic fragmentation of the institution, the absence of any significant, special powers vested in the Supreme Ruler (Yang di-Pertuan Agong), and the rotating incumbency of this central office. The capacity for challenge, like the legal strengthening which preceded it, is closely connected with the fact that the legitimization which the Malay monarchy has served relates to a system of ‘universal corporate ranking’ in a plural society. This function enables the monarchy to appeal to a powerful, ethnic vested interest in support of its own perpetuation.

Of course, it is a sociological commonplace that racial appeals and ethnic incorporation provide a basis for solidarity in any plural society across would-be class lines, to the benefit of economically privileged strata. But in the case of Malaysia the Malay middle-class and property-owning interests which benefit from such phenomena do not depend solely on the actions and words of their political party to keep ethnic solidarity alive and themselves ‘in business’: they may be said to have tapped the resources of monarchy for the same purpose too, and might be argued to benefit from this to a greater degree than the masses whom they lead or govern. The role of monarchy in delivering a more traditional kind of legitimacy to the modern Malay elite by proxy, in return for secure wealth and status, may be characterized as one important but unwritten ‘social contract’ and ‘sociological symbiosis’ of contemporary Malaysia.

7

Malaysia