The rise and fall and rise of Chea Sophara

Related: The CPP loyalist’s guide to success

Chea Sophara (right) receives an official stamp from Sar Kheng during his appointment ceremony to Minister of Land Management. Pha Lina

The rise and fall and rise of Chea Sophara

Phnom Penh Post | 7 October 2016

At the opening of a new City Hall building in 2002, a band played a 40-minute song celebrating Chea Sophara. After it finished, assembled dignitaries filed past the then-governor of Phnom Penh offering huge floral bouquets.

Sophara was riding high as the popular face of the capital, hailed by many for his dynamism and “vision”. In some circles, this praise extended to speculation: could the young bureaucrat be considered an alternative prime minister?

His fall came the following year, by way of a diplomatic assignment to Myanmar. The job wasn’t quite in “Siberia”, but the message was clear enough.

In a speech, Hun Sen, addressing the rumours of Sophara’s prime ministerial credentials, even offered some advice for the official, whose time “has not come”.

“I told Chea Sophara clearly that to travel a long distance he must have a stop, otherwise he will not reach his destination,” Hun Sen said at the time.

In the years since, Sophara, who ultimately avoided being sent to Yangon, has climbed his way back up, first spending time as a secretary of state at the Ministry of Land Management and Urban Planning before being appointed Minister of Rural Development in 2008.

Earlier this year, in Hun Sen’s much lauded “reshuffle”, the former governor, who did not respond a request for comment, took over the Land Management and Urban Planning Ministry.

Author Sebastian Strangio says Sophara’s decline and rise is a good example of the system in action. “It shows how the CPP maintains an organic balance between competing powerful interests, punishing those that step out of line while setting out a path to political redemption,” he says.