Kampuchea: Patterns of Factional Conflict and International Confrontation

Abstract

On December 5, 1981, the Central Committee of the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP), the organizational matrix of the Hanoi-imposed and -supported People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) headed by President Heng Samrin, announced at the close of its "second ordinary meeting" held in Phnom Penh, that Pen Sovan, the KPRP's secretary general and chairman (i.e. premier) of the Republic's Council of Ministers, had "been permitted to take a long rest in order to cure himself from illness." Though subsequently PRK diplomats affirmed that Sovan really was "seriously ill," allegedly suffering from heart and nervous system ailments, informed sources agreed that Sovan's resignation had been forced and reflected a power struggle within the KPRP and PRK leadership. Indeed, by March, 1982, diplomatic observers in Bangkok believed Sovan to be in Hanoi, being held under house arrest. Sovan was said to have run afoul of his avowedly pro-Moscow political orientation which increasingly had begun to irk the Vietnamese. The latter maintain a 200,000-man military force in that part of Kampuchean territory that is under the PRK's control, and an estimated 5,000 civilian Vietnamese officials and party cadres "assist" and "advise" in the day-to-day operations of the PRK government.