2024-08-04 21:10:46
To Lam (67), the current President of Vietnam, has been elected as the General Secretary of the Communist Party, the ‘top power’ in Vietnam. There are predictions that President Lam, who has led a large-scale anti-corruption investigation in recent years, will strengthen anti-corruption investigations against high-ranking officials who could compete with him in the future, which could weaken the Vietnamese government’s collective leadership system.
According to Reuters and local media outlet VN Express on the 3rd, the Communist Party of Vietnam held a Central Committee meeting that morning and unanimously elected Chairman Lam as the successor to General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, who passed away last month. General Secretary Trong, who took office as the 7th General Secretary of the Communist Party in 2011, is the longest-serving General Secretary since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and is considered one of the most powerful leaders since Ho Chi Minh.
The successor, Chairman Lam, served in Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security for about 40 years, starting in 1979. He became Minister of Public Security in 2016 and gained fame for leading the anti-corruption investigation that was dubbed the “Burning Pot” for several years. He will serve as Secretary General until the end of Trong’s term in 2026.
There is an outlook that Chairman Lam, who rose to the top of the hierarchy based on his experience in the Ministry of Public Security, could weaken Vietnam’s collective leadership system. Vietnam has a structure in which the Communist Party Secretary-General, State President, Prime Minister, and National Assembly Chairman, who are ranked 1st to 4th, share power. This is to prevent power from being concentrated in one person and to emphasize ‘political stability’. However, cracks have been detected in the leadership system, with two State Presidents replaced midway through the past year and the National Assembly Chairman also stepping down during his term. Carl Thayer, professor emeritus at the University of New South Wales in Australia, told AFP, “Chairman Lam was not afraid to bring down very important figures,” and “he will do so again.” In fact, on the day Chairman Lam was elected Secretary-General, the Central Committee announced that it had dismissed four high-ranking officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Le Minh Khai and Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Giang Quoc Khanh, who had submitted their resignations for ‘violating party rules’.
Some analysts say that if he holds the positions of General Secretary and President, Vietnam could end up similar to China, where President Xi Jinping is effectively a one-man state. Nguyen Khak Giang, a researcher at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak think tank in Singapore, told Reuters, “If no one is appointed to replace Lam, it will be a signal that a new chapter (the full-scale weakening of the collective leadership system) has begun in Vietnam,” adding that “this practice could become the norm after 2026.”
Reporter Kim Yun-jin [email protected]
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2024-08-04 21:10:46