ASEAN failed to achieve anything in regard to the illegitimate military junta in Myanmar last year as Hun Sen simply waited to hand the problem over to someone else. Hun Sen and his representatives failed to meet with National League for Democracy (NLD) leader Aung San Suu Kyi or any representative of the National Unity Government (NUG), which represents the will of the vast majority of Myanmar’s people.

Hun Sen looked on in passive acquiescence as Suu Kyi was sentenced to 33 years in prison, including three years of hard labor. The ASEAN doctrine of noninterference to which Hun Sen enthusiastically subscribes makes such monstrous behavior by Myanmar’s junta possible.

The only contribution made by Hun Sen as chairman of ASEAN that anyone will remember in the future is his gift of luxury watches, for which he has an enduring fondness, at a summit in November. Cambodia, in case you were wondering, does not have any tradition of watchmaking.

The fake election that took place in Cambodia in 2018 is the blueprint for the plan by Myanmar’s junta to devise a bogus electoral exercise to try to secure a fig leaf of legitimacy. In Cambodia, the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) was dissolved by order of the politically controlled Supreme Court in 2017.

The ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) won every single national assembly seat in the 2018 election, with not a whimper of protest from ASEAN and very little international reaction. Such timidity on the part of the international community encouraged Myanmar’s military in its calculation that it could overthrow a democratically elected government with minimal risk of repercussions.

Myanmar’s military “leader” Min Aung Hlaing has said he plans to hold an election in 2023. He expects to get away with it, just as Hun Sen expects to succeed in another bogus Cambodian election in July.

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