Son Sann (5 October 1911-19 December 2000) was Prime Minister of Cambodia from 1 May 1967 to 31 January 1968, succeeding Lon Nol and preceding Penn Nouth.
Biography[]
Son Sann was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in 1911, and he came from a wealthy landowning family. He was educated in Paris and London before joining the civil service in 1935, and he became an early member of the Democratic Party of Cambodia. He rose in the ranks of Laotian politics during the late 1940s, serving as Foreign Minister from 1958 to 1960 as a member of the dominant Sangkum party. From 1964 to 1966, he served as President of the National Bank of Cambodia. Following the 1970 coup against Norodom Sihanouk, Son Sann fled to France, and he returned to Cambodia in 1978 and formed the KPNLF from anti-communist refugees at the border with Thailand. The United States supported him during Ronald Reagan's presidency, as his KPNLF was seen as a better ally than both the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese-backed Kampuchean People's Revolutionarty Party. He founded the Buddhist Liberal Democratic Party in 1992 and served as an MP for Phnom Penh from 1993 to 1997, and he died in 2000.