Cambodia’s Facebooker-in-Chief

Evening is approaching and the demanding, meretricious din of a Facebook notification is heard. What
could be heralded by this tone? The ramblings of a politically-minded acquaintance? A friend request? None of the above. On this evening, it is the message “Hun Sen is live” and photos of the Cambodian prime minister posing awkwardly for selfies at a rural market.

In September 2015, after two years of denial, Hun Sen formally recognized the “Samdech Hun Sen, Cambodian Prime Minister” Facebook page as his own. At the time, it had just surpassed more than one million likes, and within a matter of months it became clear that the formerly digitally-apathetic leader was able take to social media like the proverbial fish to water. Such was his conversion that in February he could announce: “[We] are an electronic government.”

Hun Sen’s enthusiasm for social media has certainly not been half-hearted. He, or whoever manages his Facebook page, posts political speeches, selfies, and motivational videos on a daily basis. He has even engaged in the seemingly banal; in June, thousands of Cambodians congregated on his Facebook page as he lived streamed the finale of “The Voice Cambodia.”

It might have been the opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) that saw the importance of social media at the beginning of the decade, with its president Sam Rainsy acting as the trendsetter by taking Cambodian politics online. Today, however, if numbers matter, Hun Sen is bettering his political rival: 4,692,690 page likes to 2,803,102, on the day I last checked. Although there are few doubts that a credit card hasn’t been used to augment Hun Sen’s followership slightly.

In any case, to paraphrase a Chinese adage, when a finger points to the moon, only the idiot looks at the finger. The importance of Hun Sen’s activity on Facebook is not how many people he’s engaging with, but how and why he’s doing so.

The concern for populist politicians is how to strike a stable balance between clients and voters. Hun Sen, for whom this description is not unfair, has unshakeable political and economic networks rooted in almost all spheres of Cambodian society. But at the 2013 elections, his Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) lost 22 seats to the CNRP, and was only able to gain 300,000 more votes than the opposition. 

“The primacy of social media is undisputed and it has caused everyone to stake a claim… Social media taught the authorities a lesson in 2013. This is why they’re now making all these inroads into a space that they previously ignored and underestimated,” said Sophal Ear, Associate Professor of Diplomacy and World Affairs at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California, and author of Aid Dependence in Cambodia: How Foreign Assistance Undermines Democracy.

It would be wrong to say social media alone almost secured the CNRP victory in 2013 since that explanation detracts from the public’s discontent with the government, which had been building for many years. Nevertheless, it was certainly a major part of their pitch to the Cambodian electorate. By the last count, more than half of the Cambodian population is below the age of 24, and this is expected to remain so in the coming decades. It was this young and typically urban demographic, active on the Internet, that the CNRP was able to tap for votes in the last election. It is the same group Hun Sen intends to woo with his avuncular attempts at selfie-politics. And it is the widespread disaffection with the government prevalent among the youth that Hun Sen intends to abate using social media.

“Hun Sen has opened his Facebook inbox for public complaints, ordering his party members from national to commune levels to engage and keep eyes on his Facebook page in order to respond [to the] public’s concerns and questions,” said Ou Ritthy, a political blogger and co-founder of Politikoffee, a youth discussion forum.

This edict came in February, when Hun Sen instructed every ministry to form working groups to monitor grievances posted on his Facebook page, and to resolve the issues in a timely fashion. In a speech at the time, he revealed that when Health Minister Mam Bun Heng noticed complaints about the cost of entrance examinations for the University of Health Sciences, he was informed and within days an order was put out for the fees to be reduced from $125 to $25.

Take, as another example, the incident in June when Hun Sen was fined 15,000 riel (a little less than $3.75) by Koh Kong province’s district police after a video appeared on Facebook of him driving a motorcycle without a helmet. One publicity stunt turned into a far larger one when, following criticism of his actions on social media, Hun Sen wrote on his Facebook page, “I predicted that even though I apologized, the police still fined me because I committed a fault.” He then took a swipe at his rivals by claiming that, despite politicians’ parliamentary immunity, he welcomed the act of the district police to “implement the law without discrimination and with independence, and without any fear of powerful people, including the Prime Minister.”

It shouldn’t need to be said that the district police would not have imposed a fine without the acquiescence of Hun Sen, who, through Facebook, was able to give the appearance of accountability and listening to criticism. One must surely question whether there would have been a similar response from the prime minister if a more serious crime has been committed. One must also question whether it is the case that by opening up his Facebook page for public criticism, Hun Sen is merely providing a veneer of accountability, when in fact what is happening is duplicity and accountability in unequal measures; business as usual offline with a slight gilding of change online.

A concern with using social media to hold politicians and governments accountable is the inherent “short-termism” of online political engagement. This is the same in Cambodia as elsewhere around the world. While a particular issue might be trending for a week or so, to actually hold a government to account requires interest for months or years.

On a number of occasions, even if the Cambodian public demands action and the government promises it will respond, when “it’s finally filtered through the court system, the relations of power makes sure people get very light sentences,” said Sebastian Strangio, journalist and author of Hun Sen’s Cambodia.

This was clearly seen when, in October, two CNRP lawmakers were attacked by a mob outside the country’s National Assembly during an anti-opposition protest. Videos of the assault were posted on social media, and it wasn’t long before a number of the attackers were identified as belonging to Hun Sen’s personal Bodyguard Unit. With undeniable evidence, months later, in an apparent act of accountability, three members of the unit were sentenced to four years in prison – but with three of those years suspended, they are only to serve one year in jail. A report by Human Rights Watch described the attack as having “all the hallmarks of an operation carried out by Cambodian state security forces,” and called the prison sentences “basically a slap on the wrist.”

That the Cambodian government has opened itself up for public criticism is certainly new, and is even more surprising, given, as Strangio said, historically “opposition is equated with treason.” However, he added, this attitude “remains imbedded online.”

In December, Hun Sen warned: “My opponents should not make insults [on social media], because we can identify you… If I want to get you, I need less than seven hours.”

One could make the point that unlike protesting in the streets, you are not going to get a policeman’s fist in the face for airing political thoughts online. However, Hun Sen’s aforementioned warning has not been an empty threat. In March, a university student was sentenced to 18 months in jail for incitement to commit a felony after he posted a message on Facebook calling for a “color revolution.” In June, a woman in Battambang province was arrested after writing on Facebook: “Samdech Techo Hun Sen died in a plane crash. Please join in celebrating.”

If it’s difficult to see where the actual line between criticism and insults is to be drawn, it’s not difficult to notice that such a line will certainly be drawn by the prime minister. Indeed, as Ou Ritthy said, “Hun Sen has applied his autocratic leadership style to centralize and monopolize powers online.”

Rather, it could also be said that Hun Sen has adapted his autocratic leadership style to suit the digital era. One of Hun Sen’s greatest achievements on Facebook has been to make himself seem more personable and accessible, said Strangio. “It has humanized him and sanded down his rough edges; to show that he’s a father and grandfather, and an ordinary guy. Whether people actually buy all of that is a different question.”

He added: “It’s [also] shown his characteristic flexibility. As a politician with no real ideological convictions, he’s long been opportunistic and able to shift his tactical course whenever needed.”

It would be too strong to say that social media has given Hun Sen the means to fabricate a personality cult. Rather, it has provided him with a means to augment one he has been building for decades. Historian Milton Osborne pointed out in an essay published in 2000 that the prime minister, before the arrival of the Internet, had been cultivating a “modified political persona” combining heavy-handed politics with a less-aggressive social face, building schools and hospitals and other forms of charity. In other words, to make him appear a benevolent “strongman.”

The fact is that for a politician, social media furnishes the demagogic. Facebook allows a politician not to interact with the electorate, but to dictate his message. It is Hun Sen’s choice when he is to be held accountable, and on what terms. It is his choice when to listen to criticism, and when to judge it to be an insult. It is also his choice which aspects of his life the Cambodian public can see, and which they cannot. Despite all the Average Joe selfies and personalized postings, Hun Sen’s online persona still “represents the same power relationship” he has with Cambodians offline, Strangio said, and “social media has [just] reproduced old political mythologies on new platforms.”

It’s a relationship and mythology that says “the prime minister is exceptional, even while an ordinary guy, and the fate of the nation should be in his hand and we should be thankful for all he’s done to Cambodia,” Strangio explained, adding that the CPP’s interest in social media illustrates that “it will be a key battlefield at the 2018 election.”  

Back in July 2015, just months before Hun Sen’s interest in Facebook peaked, the German political development agency Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) held a two-day social media workshop with both the CPP and CNRP. According to an anonymous KAS staffer, quoted by the Phnom Penh Post, “the message we gave them was that you cannot win the election through Facebook, but you can lose the election through Facebook.”