politicians-from-cambodia

"Cambodian and Vietnamese relations have prospered despite some regional and global challenges in the last few years. We are looking forward to the upcoming official visit to Cambodia by President Nguyễn Xuân Phúc to celebrate the 55th anniversary of Cambodian-Vietnamese diplomatic relations."

""He is the cheapest politician Cambodia has ever known." - by Sam Rainsy, President of the Cambodian National Rescue Party in January 2015"

""Norodom Ranariddh is still Norodom Ranariddh; there were many times already that he has joined and then withdrawn–he is tricky." by Ou Chanrath, Secretary-General of the Human Rights Party in August 2008."

""He got what he deserved, He led the party to one defeat after another. He led in an autocratic way and indulged in corruption. He is a prince without principles." - by Sam Rainsy, President of Sam Rainsy Party in November 2006."

""Everyone knows that the only person in Funcinpec with the influence and popularity to work against the CPP is Prince Ranariddh. In Khmer society, only the monarchy can stand up to the CPP but it needs a nationalist movement behind it." - by Sisowath Thomico, President of the Sangkum Jatiniyum Front Party in November 2006"

"Sihanouk’s son, Prince Ranariddh, I had met several times between 1981 and 1991. His father had placed him in charge of the royalist forces near the Thai border with Cambodia. Ranariddh resembled his father in voice, mannerisms, facial expression, and body language. He was darker-complexioned and smaller, more equable in temperament and less swayed by the mood of the moment, but otherwise much in the same mold. He had his father’s fluency in French and had taught law in Lyon University before he took over the leadership of the royalist forces. When I inspected their training camp in northeast Thailand in the 1980s I noted that it was not well organized and lacked military spirit. It was the best Ranariddh could do because, like him, his generals and officers spent more time in Bangkok than in the camp. As we were supporting them with weapons and radio equipment, I felt disappointed. After the 1991 settlement, the big aid donors took over. Ranariddh became the first prime minister (with Hun Sen as second prime minister) when his party won the 1993 UN-organized election. When we met in Singapore that August, I warned him that the coalition was a precarious arrangement. The military, police, and administration belonged to Hun Sen. If he wanted to survive, Ranariddh had to win over a part of Hun Sen’s army and police officers and some of the provincial governors. Being called the first prime minister and having his man appointed dense minister were of little value when the officers and troops were loyal to Hun Sen. He probably did not take my words to heart. He might have believed that his royal blood would assure him the support of the people, that he would be irreplaceable. - by Lee Kuan Yew, Senior Minister of Singapore in his memoirs"

""That man is Norodom Ranariddh and my name is Ung Huot. To answer your question, different personality, different name. I should not worry too much about Prince Ranariddh. Better to leave this and talk about me. You know Prince Ranariddh; and now you should know me. I was the one who tried to tell him to work together with Hun Sen. But he did not listen to me. I work with Hun Sen and there is peace and stability." - by Ung Huot, Ranariddh's successor as First Prime Minister of Cambodia in August 1997"

""I have encouraged him. I said to him after he told me that Hun Sen told him he wished him to be the next King...When I die, please replace me. Never continue to be Prime Minister, even the only Prime Minister. It will be good for you to be King because as King it will be easier to have a clean reputation." - by Norodom Sihanouk in 1996"

"I’ve been listening to my father’s songs lately. He was a wonderful composer; I love his songs very much. My father used to say to me, “My son Ranariddh sang my songs the best,” because you had to sing it with your own heart. I used to sing a lot. He didn't like to sing his own songs, so I used to do it."

"I have always been prepared – anytime, any day. I have a title to accompany the King, but I have long prepared myself for government service. If Samdech wants to call me anytime, even if I am not in the country, I have the ability to return."

"I would like to tell you that I no longer call Marie ‘Ranariddh.’ She can use Norodom. I don’t permit her to use [the name Ranariddh] because she has gone to, frankly speaking, she has gone to the traitors’ group. I am finished with her."

"In 1993, I made a huge sacrifice: The winner shared power. I sacrificed once again not to take the throne [in 2004], be­cause I think that I have a duty to lead the Funcinpec Party, to protect the members. Who else can make sacrifices like me?"

"Please take my name off the candidate list. I’ve decided to stay in politics for good. Between the two choices of being the next king and being a politician, I will surely choose to involve myself in politics to lead Funcinpec ahead. I have decided to take to politics more than the throne. Prince Sihamoni has always sup­ported my candidacy for the throne. I thank him for his support. But I have decided I am not a candidate. I like to be in politics."

"Of course, as a human being I am facing a great dilemma. I don't want to praise myself that everyone acknowledges that among the members of the royal family, maybe I am the only one. But at the same time Funcinpec needs me, and I am still fighting for the victory of my party, but it is up to the people. The party that wins the election [in 2003], its leader will be appointed prime minister."

"If I have one final word to say, I have to quote Singapore's Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew, when I met him after being appointed first prime minister. He told me this, 'You look like your father, you talk like your father, but please don't be like your father'. I think, what he said summed up my father. It is enough. With such an assessment, maybe it is not even necessary to write a book on Sihanouk and on me."

"Such a resemblance has to be through a natural way. You cannot succeed in resembling anyone, even if that man is your father. I was simply born like this. I did not have any intention to be similar to my father. For me, it is a big burden. People used to tell us it would be very easy for me to succeed because I am the son of Sihanouk. People adore the king and I look like him. It is not my achievement they are remembering, but the deeds of my father. On the contrary, if I fail the people would say, 'Oh you are the son, but you are not like your father'. It's rather a burden."

"On the contrary, it will be a big gift if I am not King. I do not believe my father is happy to be King. He continues to blame me for making him King. I am happy also not to be King. We look too much like each other. He was deposed and I was deposed. History will talk about my father being deposed in 1970 in a coup d'etat. History will talk about Ranariddh as the deposed prime minister."

"I didn't launch any campaign, I just want the people to protect our constitution, that the National Assembly has adopted, that we have the motto, nation, religion and King. So the people adhere to the religion and to the throne, ...so we have nation, religion and King and the foreigners often say that the Funcinpec party is the monarchist party, which supports multi-party liberal democracy, protects the constitutional monarchy, protects the throne, the King....If we can protect all this we have freedom."

"It's difficult to be the King's own son rather than his adopted son. That's Hun Sen. Samdech Hun Sen, as an adopted son, has the right not to listen to the King. I, as his [natural] son, don't have such a right."

"I personally am too passionate, I am too much of a politician, and too outspoken to be a reasonable and successful king...definitely, I am no candidate for the throne."

"It is easier to talk about such things like democracy, human rights and freedom. Democracy is just a phrase to be talked about in idle gossip. Democracy means food for the people's stomach, shelter, education, medical facilities and basic amenities and the freedom to move freely. Discipline is more essential in our society than democracy, though they have a need of both."

"I didn't choose to be prince. But I am a citizen [and] as a citizen of this country I have the right to enter politics. It is not good to make such a discrimination. We are part of the Cambodian nation."

"Democracy is a form of leading state in which the right and power in the hands of the people as a permanent. To ensure that the right and power is in the hands of people permanently, it must have a system to ensure the balance of power between citizens with its representatives."

"For what purposes are we organizing this congress? Although this congress aims at electing the party leaders, adopting the party’s statute, validating the Party’s Central Committee membership so on and so forth, it only marks the stepping stones towards our goal. So what is our goal? We have to visualize the common dream which is our goal. It is a common dream that all Cambodian citizens have visualized, ―A nation in which we live in equity as its owners."

"Keynotes for the 1st ordinary congress (6 November 2011)"

"Up to this point, I, however, wish to post a rather unexpected question to the congress: How would you feel if I would say ―Thanks to you for your confidence in me with your votes‖? You would feel both ironic and suspect at such an expression."

"You are very clear with the characteristics of your challengers. You grasp the hearts of your challengers and explicitly compare your hearts with those of the challengers. You are confident of the concepts, abilities to form the concepts and conceptual gaps of your challengers. Finally, I have a piece of concept in the form of both question and suggestion and share with all compatriots throughout the country: Can we allow our hearts to treat our people as members of your great family?"

"Cambodia is not a peaceful place for good people to live in. In this situation, there are only 3 available options for you. Firstly, live in fear which you try to hide, whereas possible, in order to live comfortably even when you’re aware that it is an injustice for you and other victims in the society. Secondly, learn to be an evil person and ignoring your conscious as a human for the survival of..."

"It is definitely complicated, difficult and risky to fight against the strong-built structures of power concentration. However, it is a must-fight battle for us regardless of the way we die. As a person with dignity, we cannot live under the brutality, cruelty and inhumanity of the thief-like people, who are above the law and proudly walk in our own country."

"It is a real tragedy for a nation when three groups of its people, namely politicians, religionists and civil society workers, just pretend to be generous."

"Virtue inside is the real value of human, if ldp cannot rule this country, of course our country not yet be cured. All ldp supporters must be clear this point."

"Each of our personal interests may not be the national interest But the national interest is clearly each of our benefit."

"It is futile to debate on what is wrong and right with people whose remorse is not their punishment, nor is it reasonable to care about their promise and criticism."

"He was always a good husband. He tried his best to educate the children not to be traitors. Since I married him in 1985, I never saw him do a bad thing ... what I would like the world to know was that he was a good man, a patriot, a good father."

"In his murderous, almost psychotic, schemes for a communist utopia, Pol Pot, Brother Number One, outran anything in George Orwell's imagination. During a reign of just under four years, he oversaw the deaths of between two and five million men, women and children — over a third of the entire population of Cambodia."

"Pol Pot, the communist Khmer Rouge leader who created the democidal hell known as Democratic Kampuchea, only ruled Cambodia for four years, but in that short time he murdered millions of innocent people — half the population — impoverished the country, killed all intellectuals, or even people who wore spectacles, and tried to restart time at a diabolic Year Zero."

"Dictators, perhaps because they know their own lies so well, have usually realized the power of history. Consequently, they have tried to rewrite, deny, or destroy the past. Robespierre in revolutionary France and Pol Pot in 1970s Cambodia each set out to start society from the beginning again. Robespierre’s new calendar and Pol Pot's Year Zero were designed to erase the past and its suggestions that there were alternative ways of organizing society."

"Pol Pot makes a very powerful impression on those who hear him for the first time. After that, they want to come back... those who attend his seminars feel enlightened by his teaching, his explanations and his vision... he's like a father to us."

"We want only peace, to build up our country. World opinion is paying great attention to the threat against Democratic Kampuchea. They are anxious. They fear Kampuchea cannot oppose the Vietnamese. This could hurt the interests of the Southeast Asian countries and all of the world's countries."

"In Cambodia, the Cambodian people, communists and patriots, have risen against the barbarous government of Pol Pot, which was nothing but a group of provocateurs in the service of the imperialist bourgeoisie and of the Chinese revisionists, in particular, which had as its aim to discredit the idea of socialism in the international arena... The anti-popular line of that regime is confirmed, also, by the fact that the Albanian embassy in the Cambodian capital, the embassy of a country which has given the people of Cambodia every possible aid, was kept isolated, indeed, encircled with barbed wire, as if it were in a concentration camp. The other embassies, too, were in a similar situation. The Albanian diplomats have seen with their own eyes that the Cambodian people were treated inhumanly by the clique of Pol Pot and Yeng Sari. Pnom Pen was turned into a deserted city, empty of people, where food was difficult to secure even for the diplomats, where no doctors or even aspirins could be found. We think that the people and patriots of Cambodia waited too long before overthrowing this clique which was completely linked with Beijing and in its service."

"There was, to be sure, a great deal to regret about the Cold War: the running of risks with everyone's future; the resources expended for useless armaments; the environmental and health consequences of massive military-industrial complexes; the repression that blighted the lives of entire generations; the loss of life that all too often accompanied it. No tyrant anywhere had ever executed a fifth of his own people, and yet the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot did precisely this in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. The future will surely remember that atrocity when it has forgotten much else about the Cold War, and yet hardly anyone outside of Cambodia noticed at the time. There was no trial for crimes against humanity: Pol Pot died in a simple shack along the Thai border in 1998, and was unceremoniously cremated on a heap of junk and old tires. At least there was no mausoleum."

"Dreams of a Communist utopia inspired Pol Pot to kill more than a million Cambodians. Mao, Stalin, and Hitler had more victims, but Pol Pot, without a war, destroyed a greater proportion of his population than anyone else in history. His three years in power so devastated the country that, nearly 30 years later, it is still recovering. He led such a clandestine existence that few reliable details of history are known and virtually nothing about his private life"

"I was responsible for everything so I accept responsibility and blame but show me, comrade, one document proving that I was personally responsible for the deaths."

"We did not yet have laws or order. We were like children just learning to walk."

"When I die, my only wish is that Cambodia remain Cambodia and belong to the West. It is over for communism, and I want to stress that."

"Whoever wishes to blame or attack me is entitled to do so. I regret I didn't have enough experience to totally control the movement. On the other hand, with our constant struggle, this had to be done together with others in the communist world to stop Kampuchea becoming Vietnamese."

"Tuol Sleng was a Vietnamese exhibition; a journalist wrote that. People talk about Tuol Sleng, Tuol Sleng, Tuol Sleng, but when we look at the pictures, the pictures are the same. When I first heard about Tuol Sleng, it was on VOA [Voice of America]. I listened twice."

"There's what we did wrong and what we did right. The mistake is that we did some things against the people — by us and also by the enemy — but the other side, as I told you, is that without our struggle there would be no Cambodia right now."

"He said that he knows that many people in the country hate him so much and think he's responsible for the killings. He said that he knows many people died. When he said this he nearly broke down and cried. He said he must accept responsibility because the line was too far to the left, and because he didn't keep proper track of what was going on. He said he was like the master in a house he didn't know what the kids were up to, and that he trusted people too much."

"First, I would like to tell you that I came to carry out the struggle, not to kill people. Even now, and you can look at me, am I savage person? My conscience is clear."