Nearly a year after Cambodia's inconclusive general election, the National Assembly ratified a new government on Thursday, with long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen sworn in for another five-year term.
With a show of hands, the 96 attending members of the 123-seat parliament also voted for royalist leader and former co-Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh to stay on as president of the National Assembly, a largely titular position.
The opposition Sam Rainsy Party boycotted the meeting, arguing that a recent constitutional amendment allowing a simultaneous vote for Hun Sen and Ranariddh was illegal.
The amendment, also criticised by the ageing King Sihanouk who is watching events in a huff from North Korea, was passed to prevent one half of the incoming coalition being double-crossed by the other if the votes were held separately.
In a rare show of public unity between two sworn political enemies, Hun Sen and Ranariddh, Sihanouk's son, brushed aside fears their coalition would be in name only and that Hun Sen would run the impoverished Southeast Asian nation as he wished.
"Our co-operation this time is not only on paper," Hun Sen told reporters, with a smiling Ranriddh standing next to him. "We will co-operate with each other from the top level to the grass roots."
The Cambodian People's Party (CPP) of Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge soldier who has been in charge for nearly 20 years, came first in last July's polls, but failed to secure the two-thirds parliamentary majority needed to rule on its own.
After a year of talks with the royalist FUNCINPEC party, its reluctant partner in the previous administration, the two factions cobbled together another coalition which appears little changed from its predecessor.
The two sides had a violent bust-up in 1997, which saw tanks return to the streets of Phnom Penh, and analysts said FUNCINPEC might again be unhappy as a passive, junior partner.
"It is too early to say if they can stay peacefully together until the end of their term," said human rights lawyer and political analyst Thun Saray.
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