Vietnam’s newly installed Communist Party chief To Lam will relinquish his role as president while overseeing a reshuffle at the top of government following the death of his predecessor. - Photo: Vietnam News/ANN
HANOI (Bloomberg): Vietnam’s newly installed Communist Party chief To Lam will relinquish his role as president while overseeing a reshuffle at the top of government following the death of his predecessor.
The National Assembly on Monday separately accepted the resignation of Deputy Prime Minister Le Minh Khai for violating anti-corruption rules. Parliament also appointed three deputy prime ministers, with Lam to step away from the presidency later this year.
The reshuffle, revealed in various government statements, comes amid an anti-graft campaign that has led to unprecedented political upheaval and follows the death of longtime Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong in July. The party is now looking to create a sense of stability ahead of its twice-a-decade congress in early 2026, when top leaders are chosen for five-year terms.
"It will help things settle down, especially with To Lam leaving the presidency,” said Le Dang Doanh, an economist and former government adviser in Hanoi, noting the party is matching officials with positions to ensure smooth governance and prepare it for the Party Congress.
The National Assembly will vote in October on a candidate to fill the presidency, according to a post on the government’s website, which cited the legislature’s Chief Administrator Bui Van Cuong. Under Vietnam’s political system, the Party Central Committee will nominate a candidate for president for the parliament to vote on.
By paring Lam’s role to party chief - the country’s most powerful political role - Vietnam is reverting to its "four pillars” structure by which separate leaders hold the key positions of government. It also puts to rest concerns circulating online he would try to consolidate power by occupying two positions, as in China, where Xi Jinping is both president and general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.
Breaking Tradition
"To Lam doesn’t want to be seen following in Xi Jinping’s footsteps,” said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, noting that the presidency is largely ceremonial. "He wants to maintain the collective leadership principle of the Vietnamese political system.”
If Lam had tried to keep both roles, that could have caused "fracturing” among domestic political elites and, overseas, have raised concern among Western partners that Vietnam might have been adopting the Chinese model, he added.
In a break from party tradition in Vietnam, Trong took over the presidency in 2018 following the death of then-President Tran Dai Quang before relinquishing the post in 2021.
"To Lam’s holding on to the presidency would give rise to outside questions about the stability and direction of Vietnam,” said Carl Thayer, emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia. Now the government will return to "four people, not three, at the top of the leadership.”
Trong’s death added uncertainty within the government as a years-long anti-corruption campaign has led to scores of senior officials and business executives being detained. Two presidents, three deputy prime ministers and other party officials recently quit office.
Dismissals
Former Deputy Prime Minister Khai oversaw the economy, and in June unsuccessfully urged Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to grant Vietnam market economy status.
He was punished for violations linked to a probe into a resort-residential project, according to information on the government’s website. Representatives of Khai were not immediately available for comment.
Deputy Prime Minister Tran Luu Quang will also step down and become leader of the party’s central economic commission.
The three new deputy prime ministers are Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son, Finance Minister Ho Duc Phoc and Nguyen Hoa Binh, who was dismissed from his position as chief justice of the Supreme People’s Court of Vietnam.
Phoc and Son will keep their ministerial positions until parliament selects their successors, according to the government posting.
‘Blazing Furnace’
Lam, officially installed as the new head of the party on Aug. 3, said he would "resolutely” continue an aggressive push to stamp out graft while working to ease bureaucratic bottlenecks to help the economy.
The "blazing furnace” campaign, as Trong called it, is popular among Vietnamese, and has lifted the country’s ranking from 113th in 2016 to 83rd last year in Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index.
But non-stop investigations have slowed the gears of government by making many businesspeople risk-averse, while some observers see the campaign as a way to remove political rivals amid behind-the-scenes power struggles. - Bloomberg
