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KING-FATHER NORODOM SIHANOUK

KING-FATHER NORODOM SIHANOUK was born on October 31, 1922. He was the King of Cambodia until his abdication on October 7, 2004, is now "King-Father of Cambodia," a position in which he retains many of his former prerogatives as constitutional king. The son of King Norodom Suramarit and Queen Sisowath Kossamak, Sihanouk has held so many positions since 1941 that the Guinness Book of World Records identifies him as the politician who has occupied the world's greatest variety of political offices. These included two terms as king, two as sovereign prince, one as president, two as prime minister, and one as Cambodia's non-titled head of state, as well as numerous positions as leader of various governments-in-exile.

Nordom Sihanouk's actual period of effective rule over Cambodia was from November 9, 1953 to March 18, 1970. Norodom Sihanouk received his primary education in a Phnom Penh primary school, the École François Baudoin. On March 2, 1955, King Sihanouk abdicated in favor of his father, taking the post of prime minister a few months later. While the Vietnam War raged, Sihanouk promoted policies he claimed would preserve Cambodia's neutrality. In the spring of 1965, he made a deal with China and North Vietnam to allow the presence of permanent Vietnamese bases in eastern Cambodia and to allow military supplies from China to reach Vietnam by Cambodian ports. Cambodia and Cambodian individuals were compensated by Chinese purchases of the Cambodian rice crop by China at inflated prices. The combination of political repression and problems with China made his balancing act impossible to sustain. On March 18, 1970, while he was travelling out of the country, Lon Nol, the prime minister, convened the National Assembly which voted to depose Sihanouk as head of state and give emergency powers to Lon Nol. Prince Sirik Matak, a royal prince who in 1941, had been passed over by the French government in favor of his cousin Norodom Sihanouk's leadership role, retained his post as Deputy Prime Minister.

After the coup Prince Sihanouk fled to Beijing and began to support the Khmer Rouge in their struggle to overthrow the Lon Nol government in Phnom Penh. When the Khmer Republic fell to the Khmer Rouge in April 1975, Prince Sihanouk became the symbolic head of state of the new régime while Pol Pot remained in power. The next year, on April 4, 1976, the Khmer Rouge forced Sihanouk out of office again and into political retirement. The Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in December 1978 ousted the Khmer Rouge. The Vietnamese withdrew in 1989, leaving behind a pro-Vietnamese government under Prime Minister Hun Sen to run the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK). Sihanouk continued to live in luxury in Cambodia after he resigned. Short further writes that the eventual acceptance of Sihanouk by China was the result of a deal struck between the U.S. and China.

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