Cambodia’s prime minister is refusing to pay a $5,000 bet he made on the Pacquiao fight
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen enjoys a cigarette.
BANGKOK, Thailand — Somewhere in Cambodia, the prime minister’s bookie is having a rough week.
Hun Sen, the nation’s all-powerful strongman, is fuming over Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao’s loss to Floyd Mayweather over the weekend.
He’s so irate that, in a public speech recorded by the Cambodia Daily newspaper, he admitted to gambling $5,000 on the fight — and added that he’s refusing to pay up in protest of the results.
His rationale? The match was rigged.
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Hun Sen describes a conspiracy in which American judges secretly undermined Pacquiao because he’s a foreigner from the Philippines. He proposed a rematch on neutral ground — perhaps China — that would be free of America’s insidious influence.
Hun Sen said he could “hear voices of Filipino brothers and sisters who want a rematch,” according to the Cambodia Daily. “Fighting on their (American) land, they would not allow us to win unless Floyd was beaten to death.”
Hun Sen’s post-match analysis, which he slipped into a speech commemorating a rural highway, isn’t just overdramatic (though there are some legitimate concerns about the fairness of the fight). It’s revealing.
Hun Sen, now 62, has held power in Cambodia for three decades. That’s more than any other premier in Asia. His techniques for staying on top, as described by Human Rights Watch, include the repeated use of “political violence, repression and corruption” and a willingness to “stifle those who pose a threat to his rule.”
Hun Sen appears to be incredibly wealthy — at least wealthy enough to throw down $5,000 on a boxing match. Yet he claims to survive off an absurdly low official salary of $1,150 per month.
Taking his statements at face value, we’re meant to believe he dropped more than four months' salary on the fight. That $5,000 bet in Cambodia, one of Southeast Asia’s most dysfunctional and corruption-plagued nations, is equal to five years of earnings for the average citizen.
Most people who refuse to pay their sports bookie because of referees’ “injustice” run the risk of goons breaking their kneecaps. But Hun Sen enjoys virtual impunity in Cambodia. It’s even unclear if his $5,000 bet was legal. Only foreigners are legally cleared to gamble in the country’s casinos, which are technically off limits to Cambodian nationals.
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