History

Sangkum Reastr Niyum

The political movement Norodom Sihanouk founded in 1955, which won every national election while he led Cambodia, until the National Assembly removed him in March 1970.

A wooden ballot box with a slot and a small padlock on a cloth-covered table beside two stacks of blank paper slips, in a village classroom with wooden desks, an empty blackboard and a woven bamboo screen, with open shutters onto palms and stilt houses
Illustration inspired by a village polling station on election morning in the late 1950s

The Sangkum Reastr Niyum (Popular Socialist Community), or Sangkum, was the movement Norodom Sihanouk (នរោត្តម សីហនុ) founded in 1955 after giving up the throne.[1][2] Sihanouk meant it as one national movement that would take in every political faction, and he was its president from the start.[2] It won the elections of 1955, 1958 and 1962 by wide margins and held the seats of the legislature while Sihanouk was chief of state.[1] The National Assembly voted to remove him in March 1970, and the Sangkum was reported disbanded in February 1971.[1]

Founding

On February 7, 1955, Sihanouk held a referendum asking Cambodians to judge his campaign for independence. The vote went his way by 925,812 to 1,834.[2] He then gave up the throne to Norodom Suramarit (នរោត្តមសុរាម្រឹត), and founded the Sangkum.[1] The sources date the abdication differently: March 1955 in Janda's survey, less than a month after the referendum in Noel's report, and only 1955 in Willmott's.[1][2][3]

Elections

In the September 1955 election the Sangkum took 82 percent of the vote, against 12 percent for the Democratic Party, which the result swept away.[1] The seat count differs: almost all of the Assembly's seats in Janda's survey, and every seat in Noel's report.[1][2] At the next election the Sangkum won close to all of the popular vote.[2] In March 1958 and again in June 1962 it won by wide margins as the only large party. Its only opposition was a token one, from the small Pracheachon Party, which leaned toward communism and which Sihanouk allowed to exist.[1]

In its first two years the Sangkum went through nine new cabinets or reshuffles.[2] In Noel's account, the stability that followed rested on Sihanouk himself.[2] Sihanouk said that before 1966 he had picked every candidate and every cabinet in person. For the September 1966 election he endorsed any Sangkum member who could gather the nominating petitions, and 415 candidates stood for the 82 seats of the National Assembly.[2] As Sangkum president he then named a Counter-Government of 18 members to act as a shadow cabinet.[2]

Khieu Samphan won the Saang seat in Kandal province for the Sangkum. Sihanouk later named him as one of 34 "leftists"; he lost his ministry but kept his seat, and he was elected for a second term.[4] He then left Phnom Penh and went into hiding under Ta Mok's protection.[4]

Buddhist socialism and neutrality

In Willmott's account, Sihanouk's "Buddhist socialism" held that the nation could reach socialism by a common effort, with no class struggle.[3] In that spirit, parts of the economy were declared state concerns instead of being taken over.[3] In Willmott's account, Cambodia's foreign policy was one of active neutrality, kept for eight years by 1964.[3] He also pointed to a royal socialist youth movement, the Jeunesse Royale Socialiste Khmère.[3]

Late in 1963 Cambodia gave up United States aid. In Noel's report, this left a gap of 10 percent in the national budget, and to fill it the state nationalized all banking and the import and export trade.[2] In Willmott's account, the end of the aid went with steps toward socialism at home.[3] The last straw before it, in his account, was hostile radio broadcasts from the Khmer Serei (Free Cambodia), a group that ran stations in Vietnam and Thailand.[3]

The Sangkum years improved the school system and raised a new generation of intellectuals and students.[5]

Removal of Sihanouk and the end

On March 18, 1970, Sihanouk was voted out of power by the Council of the Kingdom and the National Assembly. He was accused of financial and moral corruption and of treason, for backing the presence of Vietnamese communists.[5] The vote is described differently. In Janda's survey, the Assembly voted him out as chief of state.[1] In the 2021 article's account, the republican side held the removal legal, as the National Assembly had named Sihanouk head of state in 1960; most observers, it says, saw something that looked very much like a coup, and the question is still argued.[5]

At the end of March 1970 the new authorities harshly put down revolts in the provinces of Kampong Cham (កំពង់ចាម) and Takeo province.[5] In July 1970 Sihanouk was sentenced to death in absentia.[5] In October 1970 the Kingdom of Cambodia took a new name, the Khmer Republic (សាធារណរដ្ឋខ្មែរ).[1] The Sangkum was reported disbanded in February 1971.[1]

People from the Sangkum stayed in positions of power under the republic. Its leaders promised to root out corruption, which in the 2021 article's account they had inherited from the Sangkum years.[5]

References 5
  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 Kenneth Janda, Political Parties: A Cross-National Survey, Cambodia (1980)
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 Don O. Noel, Alicia Patterson Foundation, Cambodian Politics I: Gently to the Right? (January 23, 1967)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 W. E. Willmott, New Left Review, Cambodia (May-June 1964)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Khieu Samphan (undated)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 South East Asia Research, The relational archive of the Khmer Republic (1970-1975): re-visiting the coup and the civil war in Cambodia through written sources (2021)


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This page was last edited on 14 November 2026, at 08:48.