A powerful security official was named Vietnam’s president on Wednesday, the third person to hold the post in less than 18 months. hustle before a generational change in leadership.
In a special session of Parliament, lawmakers approved the appointment of General To Lam, 66, as minister of public security, who had been named president by the Vietnamese Communist Party over the weekend.
On Monday, lawmakers approved the nomination of Tran Thanh Man, 61, as speaker of the National Assembly. Both messages are part of a collective of four members who rules Vietnam. (The other two are party leader, which is effectively the highest position, and prime minister.)
Therefore, General Lam and Mr Man could be in the running to replace Nguyen Phu Trong, the party leader for 13 years. Mr Trong, 80, is serving an unprecedented third five-year term as leader of the country after being re-elected in 2021. The succession vacuum has led to an intense power struggle in Vietnam – once known for its stable politics and scripted – before the next leadership transition in 2026.
Analysts say General Lam has the edge over Mr Man to win the leadership race. He has implemented an anti-corruption effort – championed by Mr Trong – that has expanded significantly in scope and scale in recent years. Many officials, including the predecessors of General Lam and Mr. Man, were killed under the cover of this so-called “firing furnace” campaign. General Lam also chaired a radical repression against civil society and was accused of being involved in a high-profile kidnapping of a former Vietnamese provincial official from Berlin in 2017.
On Tuesday, lawmakers voted to relieve General Lam as public security minister. It remains to be seen whether he will be able to ascend to the post of party leader.
“His experience as public security minister gives him a lot of power, but can also be a setback for him because he is feared by many people,” said Le Hong Hiep, a senior researcher on Vietnam at the Institute. ISEAS-Yusof Ishak from Singapore. “If he becomes party leader, people have already raised concerns that he could use the security apparatus to turn Vietnam into a police state. »
In March, General Lam’s predecessor, Vo Van Thuong, resigned only a year after taking office. He was found to have broken rules for party members, but officials did not say what those rules were. His predecessor, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, also resigned abruptly in January 2023 under similar circumstances.
Besides the two former presidents, the speaker of parliament and two deputy prime ministers have resigned in recent years because the party said they had committed wrongdoing. Since 2022, six members of the Politburo, the country’s highest decision-making body, have been removed from office. On Thursday, the party appointed four new members to the Politburo.
Mr. Man’s predecessor as Speaker of Parliament, Vuong Dinh Hue, resigned last month after the Central Inspection Committee found that he had violated regulations governing Communist Party members.
General Lam faced immense criticism in Vietnam in 2021 after a video showing him eating a steak covered in 24-karat gold flakes at a London restaurant went viral. At the time, Vietnam was under severe confinement in the event of a pandemic, and the meal costs up to $1,150, about six times the monthly income of an average Vietnamese worker. Last year, a Vietnamese activist, who parodied the meal in a video, was sentenced to more than five years in prison for “propaganda against the state”.
At Wednesday’s inauguration ceremony, General Lam said this position was a great honor and a great responsibility. He pledged to continue “the policies and guidelines established by the party.”
Corruption is endemic in Vietnam: it ranks 83rd out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s corruption index, behind China and Cuba. Fearing that corruption would undermine the party’s legitimacy, Mr. Trong launched an anti-corruption campaign in 2016, promising to eradicate “bad roots” and purify the party.
But analysts wonder whether some of these targets were political purges, particularly within an opaque system. Foreign investors have also complained that the anti-corruption campaign has slowed decision-making, with authorities now reluctant to approve projects or issue business licenses for fear of being implicated in a corruption investigation.
Despite the upheaval, foreign investors have not turned away from Vietnam, which in recent years has become a major global manufacturing hub as multinational companies sought an alternative to China. Between January and April this year, foreign direct investment in Vietnam increased by 7.4 percent compared to last year, reaching $6.3 billion. The country’s benchmark stock index has risen about 13% this year, making it the best-performing in Southeast Asia, according to Bloomberg data.
