PHNOM PENH (AFP) – Gunfire crackles, trucks explode and a shooting star announces the birth of a future ruler in an 80-episode dramatisation of Cambodian leader Hun Sen’s life, now airing three days a week in the run-up to one-sided national elections.
Cambodia goes to the polls on July 23, with the 70-year-old prime minister effectively running unopposed as he seeks to cement his legacy and prepares to hand the reins to son Hun Manet.
One of the world’s longest-serving leaders, Hun Sen has shored up his nearly four-decade rule.
But critics say his rule has been marked by political repression, environmental destruction, entrenched corruption and uneven economic growth.
“This election, likely Hun Sen’s last as prime minister, is all about securing and enshrining his legacy,” Sebastian Strangio, author of Hun Sen’s Cambodia, told AFP.
“As such, it is no surprise that Hun Sen’s life story and achievements are receiving such a wide airing.”
The near-total absence of political opposition has not stopped the premier from exhorting workers to vote for his Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) – and to watch the sweeping dramatisation on his daughter’s TV channel.
The series, The Son Under the Full Moon, takes viewers from Hun Sen’s humble beginnings to the hardship suffered by the country and his family under the Khmer Rouge – to which he once belonged – all while blending truth with fantastical fiction.
He and his acolytes maintain it is an accurate depiction of the past – despite appearances by computer-generated Khmer spirits who show up to guide the young Hun Sen.
“It is a real story,” CPP spokesman Sok Eysan told AFP of the drama, produced by a committee created by Hun Sen in 2021.
Sok Eysan said there was no state budget for the production, insisting it had been funded by CPP supporters.
“This biopic has only one goal: to promote our leader, so that people and the world know the truth about his perseverance from a simple person to a statesman,” he added.
“Truly, it is a story about me,” a tearful Hun Sen told an audience earlier this year at the series launch, adding he had helped with the script.
Once a commander for the Khmer Rouge – the hardline communists who overthrew the United States-backed government in 1975 and killed as much as a quarter of the population – Hun Sen ultimately defected to Vietnam as the regime’s purges began to cut deeper into its own ranks.
He returned alongside a Vietnamese army that toppled the regime, taking credit for Cambodia’s salvation and being rewarded by Hanoi with his installation as premier in 1985.
