The BBC Analysis on Cambodia

4 February 2013
Analysis
Jonathan Head
BBC News, Phnom Penh

Cambodia's awful history has offered few figures of authority who engender respect, let alone affection. So it is perhaps fitting that so much of the population has joined the hushed lines snaking past the gilded sarcophagus of former King Sihanouk, a man whose tortuous career was inextricably entwined with the fate of his country.

Quietly, a few people have let it be known they would have pointed out some of Sihanouk's glaring flaws at another time, but not when there is such a powerful public appetite to think fondly of the "Papa King", as he styled himself. Every public comment I have heard talks of his devotion to the country, and of the many good things he did for Cambodia.

But how good were they? Appointed king by the French colonial authorities at the age of 18 in 1941, Sihanouk proved to be a masterful tactician as he confounded their expectations and drove a successful campaign for Cambodian independence in 1955. He then abdicated from the throne, and went on to become prime minister, and then chief of state. He had unchallenged power for more than a decade.

He used it to push through modernisation projects for his country. But many of these proved impractical, and many more were never properly implemented. He tolerated no opposition and harshly repressed anti-government movements, until being ousted by a coup in 1970. He always believed he was indispensible, and some believe this led to his fateful decision to ally himself with the Khmer Rouge, in the early 1970s and in the 1980s.

He was a complex character of many contradictions. The journalist Philip Short has summed him up thus: "An improbable mixture of rage and self-pity, acid and honey, brutality and sarcasm, passion and wit.

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