Word: sihanouk
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...dancing girls and a string of 20 thoroughbreds and worked diligently to improve the breed. Sports are his latest craze. He captains a championship volleyball team and recently dunked in 92 points in a basketball game. Eccentric and mercurial he may be, but Cambodia's Prince Norodom Sihanouk, 41, is also one of the shrewdest leaders in South east Asia...
...Sihanouk was Cambodia's young King until 1955, when he stepped down from the throne to run for elective office in the government, because the "true face of the people was hidden from me." Under his leadership, Cambodia has embarked on an ambitious program of development. Last year the rice crop was the best in memory, and a record exportable surplus of 400,000 tons was predicted. Cambodia does not have one riel of external debt, and its currency is 100% covered by gold and foreign exchange (v. 50% in the U.S.); 25% of the budget is spent...
...Sihanouk's reaction was characteristically unpredictable; he purged his government of its oldtimers and installed in their places a group of his most fiery critics. They are youthful (average age: 36), leftwing, Paris-trained intellectuals whom Sihanouk sneeringly calls "their socialist majesties." Says Sihanouk: "I know that they do not like me. They hate me. They have always supported the Communists. Now I've given them the opportunity of supporting Cambodia for the first time. I told them, 'You can kill me, but you have no right to kill Cambodia...
What's Good for G. M. . . . Behind Sihanouk's odd choice of ministers is an adroit policy. With opponents in his very Cabinet, Sihanouk is able to keep an eye on his foes, and to force them to share blame for a worsening financial situation. He has allowed the Cabinet to slash government expenditures, but vetoed its proposal to nationalize the French rubber plantations, which are a prime source of foreign exchange. "The French might be capitalists," Sihanouk said, "but they are capable." He also delights in pointing out to his left-leaning intellectuals the failure of Cambodia...
...unnamed imperialists worrying Sihanouk were clearly his neighbors, Thailand and South Viet Nam, both of which have old feuds going with Cambodia. Sihanouk likes to show off his 28,000-man army, along with the 25,000 men and women in paramilitary units, but he evidently feels that they are not enough for safety. To feel safer, he does not necessarily want help from Red China alone. Not long ago he advanced one of the year's oddest schemes, and one that should really wow Moscow and Peking. Unless he gets a firm new guarantee of his neutrality...