Politics
By the April 1975 communist victory, Pol Pot and his associates occupied the most important positions in the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and in the state hierarchies. Pol Pot was known as "Vach du Mach" or One with the Gun. He had been CPK general secretary since February 1963. His associates functioned as the party's Political Bureau, and they held a majority of the seats on the Central Committee.
Through the 1970s, and especially after mid-1975, the party was shaken by factional struggles. There were even armed attempts to topple Pol Pot. The resultant punitive measures were taken in 1977 and 1978 when hundreds of thousands of people, including some of the most important CPK leaders, were executed.
Read more about this topic: Cambodian Genocide
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“The politics of the exile are fever,
revenge, daydream,
theater of the aging convalescent.
You wait in the wings and rehearse.
You wait and wait.”
—Marge Piercy (b. 1936)
“The newspaper reader says: this party is destroying itself through such mistakes. My higher politics says: a party that makes such mistakes is finished—it has lost its instinctive sureness.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are “up to a point.””
—George F. Will (b. 1941)