He Lost the Election by Nine Points — and the Constitution Still Made Him Co-Prime Minister Anyway

Cambodia — Constitution Profile

📅 Promulgated	September 24, 1993
🏛️ Government	Constitutional Monarchy with Parliamentary Democracy
🌍 Capital	Phnom Penh
📄 Drafted Under	22,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission, the largest of its kind at the time
🗳️ Founding Election Turnout	About 90% of eligible voters, despite an active guerrilla insurgency
⚖️ First Real Test	A 1997 coup, four years after the constitution was signed

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Most constitutions assume that whoever wins an election gets to lead. Cambodia's founding document, born out of a UN peace process trying to hold together a country still recovering from genocide and a guerrilla war, didn't have that luxury. It had to build a government around two rival leaders who both needed to keep their armed followers calm — even though only one of them had actually won.

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The United Nations Ran an Entire Country Just to Get to This Constitution

Before Cambodia could write a new constitution, someone outside the country essentially had to run it first. Between 28 February 1992 and 24 September 1993, Cambodia was administered by the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia under the terms of the 1991 Paris Peace Agreements. This was the first time the United Nations directly assumed responsibility for the administration of an independent member state.

The scale of that operation was enormous for its era. UNTAC grew into a 22,000-strong civilian and military peacekeeping force tasked to ensure the conduct of free and fair elections for a constituent assembly. The country it was trying to stabilize had just emerged from one of the worst atrocities of the twentieth century — between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge's regime killed millions of its own people through mass executions, forced labour, and starvation — and the remnants of that same Khmer Rouge army were still armed and active in the countryside while the UN tried to organize a vote.

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Ninety Percent of Voters Showed Up Anyway

Despite Khmer Rouge guerrillas sabotaging peacekeepers and openly refusing to participate, ordinary Cambodians turned out for the constituent assembly election in numbers that genuinely surprised observers. Over 4 million Cambodians, about 90% of eligible voters, participated in the May 1993 elections. Pre-election violence and intimidation was widespread, caused by SOC security forces, mostly against the FUNCINPEC and BLDP parties.

The intimidation wasn't limited to political maneuvering either. In April 1993, on the eve of elections, around 100 Vietnamese residents of Cambodia were killed by Khmer Rouge forces trying to derail the entire process. Against all expectations, the legislative elections were held from 24 to 28 May 1993 calmly and enjoyed massive participation, despite intimidation maneuvers by the Khmer Rouge.

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The Loser Refused to Accept the Result — So a New Job Got Invented

When the votes were counted, the outcome was clear and not particularly close. On 28 May 1993, FUNCINPEC won 45.47 percent of the vote, against 38.23 percent for the Cambodian People's Party. A nine-point gap is a real margin. Hun Sen, the CPP's leader, didn't treat it that way. Though clearly defeated, Hun Sen refused to accept the results of the election, so his Defense Minister announced the secession of the eastern provinces of Cambodia, which had supported the Cambodian People's Party.

Facing the genuine possibility that the country could split apart over an election he had legitimately won, Prince Norodom Ranariddh chose compromise over confrontation. Ranariddh agreed to form a coalition government with the Cambodian People's Party so Cambodia would not break up. The solution invented to make that work had no real precedent — the new constitution would simply give Cambodia two prime ministers at once. Prince Ranariddh and Hun Sen became First and Second Prime Ministers, respectively, in the new Cambodian government.

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A King Who Had Already Lost His Throne Once Got It Back Through a Single Resolution

While the prime ministership question was being engineered into a power-sharing arrangement, the constituent assembly handled an even stranger piece of unfinished business — quietly erasing more than two decades of Cambodian political history with one vote. With a resolution adopted by the Constituent Assembly on June 14, 1993 to restore monarchy by making the coup of March 18, 1970 null and void, Norodom Sihanouk was returned to the throne.

Sihanouk had been overthrown in 1970, watched the Khmer Rouge devastate his country through the rest of the decade, and spent years in exile and political limbo afterward. Thirty-eight years after renouncing the title of king and twenty-three years after being removed from power, Norodom Sihanouk becomes Cambodia's monarch again — restored not through any dynastic claim being newly recognized, but through the constituent assembly legally pretending his 1970 removal had simply never happened.

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The New Constitution Promised Wide-Ranging Rights — On Paper, At Least

When the document finally came together, the actual text read like a genuinely liberal democratic charter. Debate over the draft constitution began in the Constituent Assembly on September 15, 1993. On September 21, 1993, the Constituent Assembly of Cambodia adopted a new constitution. The new constitution formally adopted a constitutional monarch, and the constitution provides for a wide range of internationally recognised human rights.

It established a king who is officially the head of state and is the symbol of unity and "perpetuity" of the nation, alongside a bicameral parliament and legislative powers shared between the executive and that elected body. On paper, it looked like a clean, modern framework for democratic governance — built, in theory, to prevent exactly the kind of unilateral power grab the country had just spent a decade trying to escape.

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Four Years Later, the Power-Sharing Arrangement Collapsed in Gunfire

The two-Prime-Minister compromise that had averted secession in 1993 didn't hold permanently. In 1997, fearing the growing power of his co-Prime Minister, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, Hun launched a coup, using the army to purge Ranariddh and his supporters. Ranariddh was ousted and fled to Paris while other opponents of Hun Sen were arrested, tortured and some summarily executed.

A later human rights investigation laid out the scale of what followed in stark terms. His bloody coup of July 5-6, 1997 and its aftermath, in which more than 100 mostly royalist opposition party members were summarily executed. The man who had lost the 1993 election and been given a co-equal share of power anyway used that very position, four years later, to violently remove the man who had actually won.

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The Constitution Survived. The Competitive Politics It Was Built For Largely Did Not.

More than three decades after the 1993 document was promulgated, Cambodia still operates under it — but the multiparty democracy it was designed to protect has narrowed considerably. The Cambodia National Rescue Party was dissolved ahead of the 2018 Cambodian general election and the ruling Cambodian People's Party also enacted tighter curbs on mass media. The CPP won every seat in the National Assembly without a major opposition, effectively solidifying de facto one-party rule in the country.

The same constitution that once forced a power-sharing compromise between two rival winners has, decades later, presided over an outcome with no real rival left to share power with at all. Hun Sen stepped down after five terms, with his son taking on the role of Prime Minister on 23 July 2023 — a hereditary-style succession happening entirely within the bounds of a document originally built to guarantee competitive, multiparty elections.

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Constitution at a Glance

Detail	Information
Paris Peace Agreements	October 1991
UNTAC Administration Period	February 1992 – September 1993
Constituent Assembly Election	May 28, 1993 (FUNCINPEC 45.5%, CPP 38.2%)
Monarchy Restored / 1970 Coup Annulled	June 14, 1993
Constitution Adopted	September 21–24, 1993
Co-Prime Minister Arrangement	Ranariddh (1st) and Hun Sen (2nd)
Hun Sen's Coup	July 5–6, 1997
Last Khmer Rouge Surrender	February 9, 1999
National Assembly Seats	125 (proportional representation)
Power Transferred to Hun Manet	July 23, 2023

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📥 Read the Constitution of Cambodia

Read more about the official constitutional framework of the Kingdom of Cambodia:

👉 Read the Constitution of Cambodia — Full Text

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A man who lost an election by nine points still ended up co-running the country. A king restored to the throne by a single assembly vote erasing his own ouster. A coup, four years later, that turned the loser's consolation prize into total power. What part of Cambodia's story surprised you most? Tell us in the comments below.

This article reflects an editorial reading of publicly available constitutional text and reporting, intended for general understanding rather than legal interpretation. Readers are encouraged to consult the original constitutional text linked above to form their own view.