In the months following the July 2013 national election, Cambodia saw massive anti-government protests. Sam Rainsy, president of the opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party, was instrumental in orchestrating these events. He lays out his justifications for challenging the current government in his recent book coauthored with David Whitehouse, a British journalist. We Didn't Start the Fire: My Struggle for Democracy in Cambodia reads as part autobiography, part history, part criticism, and part political platform.
In the first half of the book, Rainsy charts the course of his life. He was born in 1949. His father was the politician Sam Sary, who was sent by King Norodom Sihanouk to help negotiate Cambodia's independence from France in 1954. Sam Sary lost favor with Sihanouk, however, and in 1959 he was accused of treason. He fled to Vietnam and was eventually killed. Rainsy's family was ordered to leave the country in 1965, and they made their way to Paris, where Rainsy earned a degree in economics, married, and settled into a job as a financial analyst.
Rainsy describes being shocked to hear reports of the immense human suffering that took place when the Khmer Rouge gained control of Cambodia in 1975. However, he was far from relieved when the Vietnamese overthrew the Khmer Rouge in 1979 and backed a new government, writing that the occupation by a “historically aggressive, expansionist neighbor was a humiliation rather than a liberation” (p. 51). In response, he helped form the royalist Funcinpec Party in 1981. Rainsy moved to Cambodia in 1992, feeling it was his “duty” to try to establish a democracy (p. 68).
Funcinpec won the UN-sponsored Cambodian election in 1993, but the Cambodian People's Party (CPP) forced through a power-sharing agreement. Rainsy was named finance minister in the coalition government, yet he writes that he was soon dismayed by its high levels of corruption. After denouncing both CPP and Funcinpec leaders for their involvement in illegal logging and challenging forced evictions, he was stripped of his political positions in 1995. Rainsy decided to strike out on his own, forming the Sam Rainsy Party. He claims to have since faced multiple threats against his life, and he fled to France twice to avoid charges leveled against him by the CPP government.
The latter part of the book focuses on the problems in Cambodia that Rainsy attributes to the CPP's actions, and particularly to the leadership of current Prime Minister Hun Sen. Elections, he says, are fraudulent, and corruption is entrenched in all sectors and levels of government. A weak judiciary and a tightly controlled press have resulted in a lack of redress for injustices. Government land grabs are rampant, and the military's involvement in illegal logging and other forms of resource extraction has enriched those in power while causing severe environmental degradation. He claims that the current government has thus prevented Cambodia from living up to its “obvious potential” to be internally stable and economically successful (p. 186).
Rainsy vows that were he in power, he would “create a Cambodia that finally will be fit to take its place in the modern family of nation-states” by remedying these problems (p. 192). His plans include establishing an impartial National Election Committee and an anti-corruption commission, instituting a five-year term limit for prime ministers, decentralizing power to the commune level, prohibiting land grabs and redistributing land, developing an effective healthcare system, and taxing the wealthy. He also calls on the international community to help Cambodia by refusing to recognize Hun Sen's CPP government.
Accusations of racism have been leveled against Rainsy, who often relies on anti-Vietnamese rhetoric in his political speeches.Footnote 13 Although he explicitly denies these charges in his book, attesting that “racism and violence of any kind is abhorrent to [his] nature,” his writing makes it clear that he is driven by Khmer nationalist sentiments (p. 160). For instance, he suggests that Cambodia's potential for growth and stability rests on the fact that “more than 90 percent of the population are ethnic Khmer that share a language and culture” (p. 186). Unfortunately, arguments such as this may create tension with Cambodia's minorities, particularly the Vietnamese.
Rainsy wrote We Didn't Start the Fire prior to the 2013 national elections, in which the CPP once again achieved electoral victory through questionable means. Undeterred, Rainsy continues to challenge the current government. Although at times his book reads like political propaganda, it nevertheless reveals Rainsy's justifications for leadership, and in doing so adds an important perspective on the political friction in Cambodia. Readers interested in Cambodian politics would do well to pick up a copy.
