In any case, the Democrats’ election victory, Thanh’s triumphant return, and the subsequent assassination of the French high commissioner in Phnom Penh, Jean de Raymond, by a Vietnamese houseboy seemed, in combination, to mark an acceleration of Cambodia’s anticolonial struggle. Many students in Paris thought that Thanh would wrest Cambodia’s independence from the French. Their optimism was misplaced. For several months the former prime minister did little. He refused to join the Democratic cabinet and limited his actions to quietly touring the provinces and publishing a nationalist paper, Khmer Krauk! (“Khmers, Awake!”) whose editorials followed a Democratic line.20

In March 1952 the pace of events suddenly altered in a way that no one had foreseen. On the seventh anniversary of the Japanese coup de force, Son Ngoc Thanh left Phnom Penh, ostensibly to accompany a colleague to Siem Reap. Before reaching his destination, however, he disappeared. It soon became clear that he had joined forces with noncommunist, anti-French guerrillas operating in the region. Thanh set up a base in the forests of Siem Reap, hoping to draw together the Communist and noncommunist strands of resistance to the French. The move stunned his colleagues and opponents. A handful of young people, many from the Lycée Sisowath, soon followed him into the woods, but the Vietnamese-dominated Communist resistance, after some conversations with Thanh, refused to cooperate with him. By the end of 1952, he had become marginal to the independence struggle.21

Sihanouk and his French mentors were unsettled by Thanh’s defection. They turned on the Democrats, whom they mistakenly suspected of sponsoring Thanh. Conservatives defeated in the 1951 elections, like Yem Sambaur and Lon Nol, joined the king in his assault. With the connivance of the French, who sent extra troops to Phnom Penh from Saigon at his request, the king dismissed the Democratic cabinet in June 1952, dissolved the National Assembly, and began governing by decree. Sihanouk promised to deliver independence within three years (a program that was later called a “royal crusade for independence”). His bold move marked his entrance onto the political stage. It also marked the end of the Democrats’ participation in government, hastened the demise of Son Ngoc Thanh, and closed off a brief era of political pluralism that had begun with the elections of 1946 and 1947. The absolute monarchy that the French had encountered in Cambodia in 1863, and that they had kept under wraps for ninety years, was beginning to reemerge. Ironically, the French still thought that Sihanouk was working in their interests. In fact, he had discovered interests of his own and embarked on a campaign to gain independence for his people. His timing was superb. To many, however, his patriotism seemed belated and opportunistic.22

Becoming a Communist