Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party opens its twice-a-decade congress today, finalizing its leadership roster for the next five years and outlining plans for the fast-growing Southeast Asian manufacturing hub.
The only legal party in Vietnam, it has so far followed consensus-based decisionmaking, preventing the emergence of a single all-powerful leader.
Party General Secretary To Lam is challenging that model, seeking to become president as well as party chief.
Photo: AFP
About 1,600 delegates representing the party’s five million members are to assemble in Hanoi for a week of closed-door meetings.
They would vote about 200 members onto the party’s Central Committee, which in turn selects between 17 and 19 members of the powerful politburo.
The general secretary is considered the country’s top leader, but the politburo also selects the other “pillars” of Vietnam’s collective system of government: the president, prime minister, National Assembly chairman and standing member of the Central Committee’s Secretariat.
The president, prime minister and National Assembly chairman must be approved by a vote in the legislature.
Lam is set to retain his post as Vietnam’s top leader, according to sources briefed on party deliberations.
Lam spent much of his career in the secretive Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security, and his party faction is seen as aligned with the police. The other main grouping is aligned with the military.
Vietnamese President Luong Cuong, a former army general, could stay in his post or be replaced — either by Lam or by military-backed Vietnamese Minister of National Defense Phan Van Giang, analysts said.
The politburo makeup would be the best measure of Lam’s dominance, said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.
If there is a balance of power between the two factions, then Lam would be “first among equals but that doesn’t mean he has the power to do what he wants,” he said.
Having pruned the administrative state and cut red tape, experts say Lam would focus on spurring private-sector growth, and digital and technological progress.
The party has set an ambitious 10 percent annual economic growth target for the next five years.
The party is unlikely to relax its tight control of the media or harsh treatment of dissidents, more than 160 of whom are in jail, according to Human Rights Watch.
Derek Grossman, a Vietnam expert at the University of Southern California, said Lam’s leadership “heavily draws upon his tenure as security minister, suggesting that crackdowns on political dissent could become more common.”
Lam has maintained his predecessor’s “bamboo diplomacy” approach, looking to stay on good terms with the world’s major powers.
Ahead of the congress, senior cadres identified rivalry between Vietnam’s top trading partners, the US and China, as a major impediment to reaching this year’s growth target.
They are expected to pass a resolution elevating foreign affairs to a “core” national function, alongside national defense and internal security.
“Diplomatic diversification is the key method of achieving growth goals,” said Khang Vu, a Vietnam expert and visiting scholar at Boston College.
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