Thiounn Mumm, who shared these views, returned to Cambodia in July 1954 and worked closely with Vannsak and Shichau. He also renewed contact with Saloth Sar, then living under an assumed name—the first of many—in the southern part of the city. In January 1955 Mumm, Shichau, and Vannsak staged a bloodless coup in the Democratic party, pushing aside several of its founding members and taking over the executive committee. Saloth Sar continued to operate behind the scenes. Certainly none of the others took the precaution of using a false name. Interestingly, a year later Sar was known to some as “Pol,” the nickname he had used on at least one occasion in Paris. He may have been using the name when Thiounn Mumm met him.9

No one who recalled seeing Sar at this time knew what he was doing or who was paying him, for he had no visible means of support. As so often in his career, he relished a multiplicity of roles. His work involved carrying out liaison with radical Democrats in Phnom Penh on behalf of the Indochina Communist party (without admitting his affiliation) and making preparations for the 1955 elections. It seems likely that he had been sent to the capital by Tou Samouth and Pham Van Ba to work with his Democratic acquaintances to push the party to the left while also promoting the cause of the Pracheachon Group, a front formation that drew its strength from former guerrillas and that planned to contest the elections. In the months leading to the elections, Sar probably wrote for the radical newspaper Sammaki (Solidarity), edited by his brother Saloth Chhay.

Mumm and Sar also shared a specifically Communist agenda. They hoped to lay the groundwork for Communists to seize control in Cambodia, perhaps to coincide with the national elections scheduled for 1956 in Vietnam. These were expected by many, including the Americans, to result in a Communist victory. At the time, the two men accepted Vietnam’s guidance of the fledgling Cambodian party, much as their counterparts in France accepted advice from the Soviet Union. Members of the Pracheachon Group also operated under guidelines provided by the Indochina Communist party. Unlike Saloth Sar and Thiounn Mumm, however, these men had peasant or working-class backgrounds, combat experience, and no academic credentials or access to Cambodia’s elite.10

A former classmate of Saloth Sar, Chhay Yat, recalled meeting him in Phnom Penh in 1954. Yat was working with the Thanhist faction of the Democrats and hoped that supporters of Thanh, like himself, could have some say in Cambodia’s future. Chhay Yat was suspicious of Communist strategy, so Saloth Sar tried to reassure him by saying that “the wheel of history” dictated that Cambodians be friendly with Vietnam, “which is so much stronger.” Sar also promoted the idea of an Indochinese federation, comparing it favorably to the Soviet Union and its satellites and even to the United States: “Do those states consume each other?” he asked rhetorically.11