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:
“It is not so much that women have a different point of view in politics as that they give a different emphasis. And this is vastly important, for politics is so largely a matter of emphasis.”
—Crystal Eastman (1881–1928)
“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)
“Politics is repetition. It is not change. Change is something beyond what we call politics. Change is the essence politics is supposed to be the means to bring into being.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)