Word: lon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Camcar Mon Palace and is surrounded by toadying sycophants who have encouraged him to hang onto power and shield him from bad news. A dialogue with the President has often assumed a sense of unreality. TIME Correspondent David Aikman reported this recent exchange between Lon Nol and Lieut. General Saukam Khoy, president of Cambodia's Senate and Lon Nol's most likely successor...
...Lon Nol: We should stay and fight...
...Lon Nol: You should know. You're a military...
Despite the talk that he may leave the country, there was some evidence indicating Lon Nol may make a last-ditch political stand. This apparently is behind last week's decision by Lon Non, the President's ambitious and ruthless younger brother, to resign from a top army command and seek the post of secretary-general of the Social-Republican Party, the rightist backbone of Lon Nol's political support. Lon Non won a reputation for brutality when, as head of the national police, he violently suppressed student demonstrations...
...Lon Nol decides to hang on, it is because he hopes his forces can defend Phnom-Penh for three more months, until the wet season impedes the insurgents' drive. With an improved military situation, the President would expect political pressures to diminish. On the other hand, if he finally makes up his mind to leave, it may in no small measure be due to Cambodia's students. Last week, as rumors swept the capital that time had run out for the President and that a coup was imminent, leaders of the Association of Students of the Khmer Republic...