Recipe for youth appeal
First came the 8,900-pound sticky-rice cake stuffed with mung beans and pork belly, displayed at Angkor Wat and heralded as “officially amazing” by Guinness World Records.
Then, in rapid succession, came a series of recordsetting feats: the largest-ever performance of Madison dancing, with 2,015 participants. The world’s longest scarf (1.15 km), woven over the course of six months and paraded through the streets of Phnom Penh, the capital. And in November, the world’s longest dragon boat (87 metres) was launched into the Mekong River and rowed by 179 oarsmen.
While this streak of oddball achievements might seem unconnected, they are all part of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s push to get young people excited about his aging regime, which he appears to consider essential to maintaining his grip on power.
“The government’s intentions here are rather transparent: they want to create images of visible enthusiasm for the nation and its leadership,” said Katrin Travouillon, a scholar of Cambodian politics at Australian National University.
The initial salvo in this campaign was the rice-andpork colossus, unveiled at Angkor Wat in 2015, and touted as a modern-day marvel by the authoritarian Hun Sen and his youngest son, Hun Many, who hatched the idea as a showcase project for his new pro-government youth group.
“I am proud to be a child of Cambodia, and today we have achieved a giant sticky-rice cake, and the world will acknowledge that from now on,” Hun Many said in a triumphant speech at the event.
Two-thirds of Cambodia’s population is under 30, with no memory of the Khmer Rouge’s bloody rule in the 1970s, or the long years of civil war that followed. Many are weary of their country’s international reputation for genocide and political dysfunction.
So the country’s youth are less susceptible to Hun Sen’s traditional message that his party’s leaders are national heroes, deserving perpetual legitimacy because of the role they played helping to oust the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979.
The point was driven home to Hun Sen in emphatic fashion in 2013, after a near loss to an insurgent political party in an election that year. He has spent the past half-decade ramping up his efforts to appeal to the nation’s youth.
A critical plank of this project has been a revival of the country’s youth corps, headed by Hun Sen’s youngest and most affable son, Hun Many. Officially, it is non-partisan; in practice, its activities support the ruling party.
Although older Cambodians seemed skeptical, several young people said the world records resonated with them.