Sihanouk’s orchestration of the 1955 campaign foreshadowed the methods he used to govern Cambodia for the next fifteen years. In February he sponsored a referendum asking voters to approve his Royal Crusade for Independence. Balloting was open, and those who wished to vote against the king had to discard a ballot with his picture on it, an act of lèse-majesté that was probably grounds for arrest. When over 95 percent of the electorate voted as he had hoped, Sihanouk decided to enter the political arena. As king he had played a ceremonial role restricted by the constitution. To escape this, Sihanouk abdicated the throne, had his father named king, and began to campaign as an “ordinary citizen.”

His move took everyone by surprise. As a private citizen, Sihanouk hoped to smash the political parties and impose a Bonapartist consensus on Cambodia. To achieve his goals, he preempted some of the foreign policy positions taken by the Democrats and the Pracheachon. After attending a conference of recently decolonized nations at Bandung in Indonesia in April 1955, where he was lionized by the Chinese premier, Zhou Enlai, Sihanouk announced that he would follow a “nonaligned” foreign policy as the Democrats had demanded. To neutralize conservative opposition, the prince also signed a military aid agreement with the United States.

Sihanouk then formed a national political movement, the Sangkum Reastr Niyum (“Popular Socialist Community”), whose members were not allowed to belong to other political parties. Membership drives swept through the bureaucracy. Hundreds of Democrats working in the government who refused to join the Sangkum lost their jobs, and people working for other political parties were harassed and imprisoned by the police. Radical newspapers were closed down and their editors sent to prison for several months.

As his campaign gathered steam, Sihanouk occasionally accused his opponents of being supporters of communism, a system he believed was alien to most Khmer. After the Sangkum had swept the elections, its journal predicted what Cambodian life would be like if the Communists ever came to power: “There will be no happiness. Everyone will work for the government. No one will ride cars or cyclos, or wear nice clothes; everyone will wear black, exactly alike. There would be no delicious food to eat. If you ate more than allowed, the government would learn about it from your children in secret and you would be taken out and shot.”14 This extraordinary prophecy of socialist practice, self-serving at the time, came to pass in April 1975, when Communist forces liberated Phnom Penh and evacuated its population.