communist party

• Vo Van Thuong was elected as the country’s new president.
• Thuong is the party’s youngest Politburo member.
• Thuong’s nomination by the party’s Central Committee supports an earlier decision by the Politburo.

Vietnam’s Communist Party has chosen Vo Van Thuong as the country’s new president, two party sources said on Wednesday, following the surprise forced resignation in January of his predecessor as part of a comprehensive anti-corruption effort.

Thuong, 52, is the party’s youngest Politburo member, the country’s highest decision-making body, and is largely seen as close to General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnam’s most influential person.

Trong is the principal architect of the party’s “blazing furnace” fraud drive, which has seen hundreds of officials investigated and many forced to resign, including former President Nguyen Xuan Phuc and two deputy prime ministers.

Thuong’s nomination by the party’s Central Committee supports an earlier decision by the Politburo and will need to be approved by the rubber-stamp National Assembly, which will conduct an extraordinary session on Thursday and a formal session in May.

Both the government and the Communist Party announced on Wednesday that the party’s Central Committee had decided on a presidential nomination without naming the candidate.

In Vietnam, the president is mostly ceremonial, but he is one of the country’s top four political figures, along with the party’s general secretary, the prime minister, and the head of the national legislature.

A former head of propaganda, “Thuong is a dyed-in-the-wool party apparatchik and a trusted member of Secretary General Trong’s inner circle,” said Carl Thayer, an expert in Vietnam‘s politics at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra.

He is currently one of the Politburo’s 16 members and the secretary of the party’s Central Committee, one of the highest-ranking positions in the country.

Speaking at a party meeting last month, Thuong said: “The people’s lawful and legitimate interests must be the important starting point of all the Party’s guidelines and policies”.

According to Hanoi-based diplomats, the party’s decision to select Thuong as president is an attempt to advance a new generation of leaders and consolidate power in the event that Trong, 78, decides to step down before the conclusion of his third term in 2026.

The general secretary is often chosen from among one of the top leaders and Trong, who was reappointed for a third term in 2021, “is ensuring he has an acceptable successor in the mix,” one diplomat said.

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