Behind the Bombings
VIENTIANE - No fewer than six bomb blasts have shattered the calm of the public markets, buses and open-air restaurants of the Lao capital over the past
two months.
Add to that a resurgent ethnic-Hmong rebellion and an early-July attack on a customs outpost that left five
dead, and the ruling Lao People's Revolutionary Party faces the most severe crisis of its quarter-century
rule.
Contrary to government claims, however, the crisis is primarily internal. In recent months, opposing
intra-party factions have turned to their erstwhile allies,Vietnam and China, to help stop the rot plaguing the
country. In so doing, they have intensified a long-developing split between a dominant clique loyal
to Vietnam, and a pro-China clique that is growing in power and has rallied around Laos's ambitious,
no-nonsense foreign minister, Somsavat Lengsavad.
The divisions have opened wide enough to make most analysts in Vientiane believe that the recent unrest is
backed not by fringe anti-government groups as the Foreign Ministry has implied, but rather by members of
the government itself. Analysts believe elements of the pro-China faction are keen on discrediting President
Khamtay Siphandone and Prime Minister Sisavat Keobounpanh, who remain dependent on Vietnamese
support.
Sunai Phasuk, a Laos specialist at the Asian Studies Institute of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, says:
"Certain elements in the pro-China northern clique are mobilizing traditional anti-Vietnamese sentiment to
their political advantage." At least two of the bomb attacks were aimed at Vietnamese targets, including a
Vietnamese-owned shop at the morning market and a blast near the shacks of Vietnamese workers. Two
other attacks--the border-post assault and an attempted bombing at the Champa Palace Hotel in
Pakse--took place in the ruling clique's southern heartland.
"It's purely a case of brute-power politics," says a Vientiane-based analyst. "It's a very Byzantine ploy:
One group inside the party is trying to demonstrate that the present ruling elite doesn't have a grip on
security and hence it's time for change."
The split has external influences as well. Says Chulalongkorn's Sunai: "China and Vietnam are supporting opposite sides of the current power
struggle inside the Lao leadership. It's becoming a sort of proxy war for who will have more influence in the country."
Rather than offering solutions to the many political and economic woes afflicting the country , the country's top leaders have for the most part
retreated from public view. "They are treating the recent unrest like a monsoon
storm--closing the windows and waiting until the sun comes out again," says a Vientiane-based economist. And the
authoritarian, all-powerful politburo--now reduced to eight members--as always remains highly reclusive and secretive about its strategies.
INTRA-PARTY DISCONTENT
Regardless of who is actually responsible for backing the recent spate of civil unrest, it has put the ageing
ruling clique's increasingly feeble grip on power into sharp relief. According to the Vientiane analyst,
"because the present top-down system offers no real channels for dialogue or dissent at a time when
discontent with the status quo is at an all-time high, it is being expressed through civil disturbance."
Intra-party discontent runs along three main divides: generational (old vs. young); geographical (south vs.
north); and international loyalty (pro-Vietnam vs.pro-China). Foreign Minister Somsavat is taking
advantage of the rifts and staking his claim on youth, the north and China. While the politburo has a history of
clipping the wings of ambitious cadres, Somsavat, who is also a vice-premier, has worked to make himself
indispensable to the regime's survival by acting as the party's face to the outside world, both within the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations and with the international donor community, which is a key source of
the government's budget.
There have been no signs that Somsavat would make for a more democratic ruler than the current ones.
Ethnic Chinese and fluent in Mandarin, he has the closest connections with Beijing of any in the party,
and is leveraging that support to his political advantage.
Last year, for instance, when the Lao currency was in free-fall and the party was reaching for a parachute, a
visit by Somsavat to Beijing won export subsidies and interest-free loans that stabilized the kip and tamed
inflation of 167%, now down to 31%. The move "raised his stock as perhaps the only problem-solver in
the party," says the economist.
Answering the appeal fitted neatly with China's hopes of expanding its influence in Laos. "Beijing thinks
greater economic interdependence will naturally bring greater diplomatic loyalty," says a Western diplomat.
Somsavat, the diplomat says, is "making a run for the top. He's polished, fairly urbane, and the closest
thing the party has to an internationalist."
Sixty years old, Somsavat has the support of younger party cadres aged 45 to 60 who see their future
prosperity as tied to that of the region. Many of this generation resent the ageing politburo, who are mostly
in their 80s and are seen as having funnelled the lion's share of contracts and aid resources to family and
friends.
Analysts say that disaffection has many of the younger generation in the party itching to come of political
age--and get their piece of the narrowly distributed economic pie--earlier than the Lao seniority-based
system permits.
Somsavat and much of his northern clique, including Minister of Communications, Transport, Posts and
Construction Phao Bounnaphonh and Justice Minister Kham Ouane Boupha, are from Luang Prabang, which
is considered Laos's cultural centre and is tied economically more to China's Yunnan province than to
Vientiane. Party leaders from Savannakhet, Pakse and other regions southeast of Vientiane remain suspicious
of northerners in part because of the region's wartime support of the U.S.-backed royal Lao government.
Northerners, meanwhile, often look down on southern cadres as uncultured. Former leader Kaysone
Phomvihane, a pro-Vietnamese southerner who died in 1992, was able to keep these rifts from breaking into
the open. But since his death, cracks have appeared in the veneer of party unity.
For Somsavat and his colleagues to make marked gains, power would have to be wrested from top
leaders. That seems unlikely: Promotions in the party are unswervingly based on seniority.
The next party congress, an occasion at which senior cadres' political ambitions can be realized or
vanquished, is due next March. Rumours are swirling in the capital that the president is poised to hand power
to the hardline, pro-Vietnamese defence minister, Lt.-Gen.
Choummaly Sayasone. Many also speculate that the prime minister is considering quitting the politburo,
leaving room for a major shake-up in party ranks. Says the Western diplomat: "The present government has
simply run out of answers."
By Shawn W. Crispin and Bertil Lintner - Far Eastern Economic Review - July 27, 2000.
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