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- December 13, 2024 , 3:15 PM
PHNOM PENH — In 2004, King Norodom Sihanouk made the decision of stepping down from the throne.
A seasoned political leader who had run the country in the 1950s and 1960s, he had long mastered the game of politics and wanted to oversee the coronation of his successor to ensure the future of royalty in the country.
According to the country’s constitution adopted in 1993, “[t]he King of Cambodia shall reign but shall not govern.” However, as head of state and a “symbol of unity and eternity of the nation,” in times of crisis, he would “assume the august role of arbitrator to ensure the faithful execution of public powers.” The king’s role would then extend to attempting to negotiate an agreement between the parties, which he could only do if he was perceived as being neutral and had not been involved in politics.
The obvious choice was Prince Norodom Sihamoni. The youngest son of the king and Queen Norodom Monineath, he had never played a political role in the country. This, unlike the king’s oldest son Prince Norodom Ranariddh who was heading the opposition party FUNCINPEC and had served as first prime minister in the 1990s.
Born in 1953 in Phnom Penh, Prince Sihamoni was living in France at the time where he was serving as Cambodia’s permanent representative to UNESCO. He was known to have worked hard to get Khmer classical dance and Cambodia’s shadow theater inscribed on the UNESCO’s List of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
As stated in the constitution, King Sihanouk’s successor had to be officially appointed by the Royal Council of the Throne whose nine members must include the prime minister, the president of the National Assembly, the president of the Senate, the first and second vice presidents of the National Assembly and of the Senate, and the heads of the Buddhist orders of Mohanikay and Thammayut.
So on Oct. 14, 2004, the council appointed Prince Sihamoni as the future king. The coronation ceremony took place 15 days later, on Oct 29, 2004. In his first speech the following day, King Sihamoni said, “[m]y respected and beloved compatriots, I will always be your faithful and devoted servant.”
Serving as the country’s king was a matter of duty for the prince who, by all accounts, had been living quietly in Paris in France where he had taught western classical dance for several years and was known to prefer public transportation rather than using the car and driver he had been offered.
As king, he would keep this modest and low-profile approach, quietly taking initiatives to help people without this being necessarily made public. For example in 2005, when the Cambodian government relocated the Royal University of Fine Arts’ Northern Campus to what was at the time a remote location to make way for private development, King Sihamoni had discreetly set up a free bus service for students. At the time, the campus’ new location in Russei Keo district’s Phnom Penh Thmei commune was only reachable by a dirt road and the campus kept being flooded when it rained.
When he returned to the country in 2014, King Sihamoni had spent a great deal of his life abroad. Born on May 14, 1953, he was sent to Prague in Czechoslovakia in 1962. He had first attended the Majakovskeho Primary School, then the Ostrovni Elementary School. In the early 1970s, then-Prince Sihamoni obtained at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague a first university degree in Western classical dance and music, and then a master’s degree, writing his thesis on “The Conception and Administration of Artistic Schools in Cambodia.”
When the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975, Prince Sihamoni returned to Phnom Penh. He would spend the regime virtually jailed in the royal palace with the late King Sihanouk and Queen Monineath.
Following the defeat of the Pol Pot regime in January 1979, the three of them were taken to China where Prince Sihamoni at first served as his father’s secretary.
In 1981, Prince Sihamoni moved to France. Over the following years, he would be a professor of Western classical dance and artistic pedagogy at several reputed dance conservatories. He was also president of the Khmer Dance Association.
Offered the position of Cambodia’s ambassador to France, Prince Sihamoni had declined. But in 1993, he accepted to serve as the country’s permanent representative to UNESCO in Paris, a role he held until he was crowned in 2004.
Today, King Sihamoni’s duties include state and courtesy visits to foreign countries such as a state visit to Japan in April 2024 and a diplomatic visit to China in August 2024. In November 2023, he had met with UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay.
Also in November 2023, King Sihamoni had met French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris during his official visit to France. And in October 2024, he addressed the audience in France during the 19th Francophonie Summit, which was attended by 100 delegates from the 90 member states of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie—the organization of countries with a French heritage.
King Sihamoni’s activities also include visiting people in the country. In June 2023, he had met with farmers known to be in dire need, and made donations to more than 400 families, distributing money as well as goods ranging from rice, rice noodles, cans of sardines, to blankets and mosquito nets. And in August 2024, he made similar donations of money and goods to more than 500 elderly artists in need.
King Sihamoni inaugurated on Sept. 24, 2024, the Constitution Monument that now stands near Independence Monument that had been built in 1958 during his father’s administration. In his speech, the king spoke of the importance of this constitution promulgated on Sept. 24, 1993. “This supreme law has been the cornerstone of our nation's stability for three decades,” he said. "Let us stand united, determined to uphold and protect the Constitution, the very heart of our nation."