Hanoi, Vietnam (AP) – Nearly 1,600 leaders of the Communist Party of Vietnam meet this week to approve the future policy and help select the country’s top leaders amid talks about the permanence of the current party chief.
Secretary-General Nguyen Phu Trong, 76, challenged conventional wisdom by winning a second term in 2016 against a favorite opponent. Trong made his name by presiding over economic growth and waging a popular war on corruption.
There has been speculation that the selection of the new set of leaders is already a closed deal, but the Vietnamese party is highly secretive and citizens cannot even discuss candidates publicly.
The streets of the city are full of flags and posters with the hammer and sickle of the party to promote the week-long congress, which is held every five years. About 4,900 people involved in the event are expected to do two tests for the coronavirus each.
Vietnam is one of the few remaining communist one-party states in the world that does not tolerate dissent. However, politics is not entirely dictated from above.
A series of meetings up to the community level has previously been held in each of Vietnam’s 63 provinces and municipalities to select the 1,587 delegates. They will elect the 200 members of the Central Committee, which will choose between 15 and 19 of its members to serve in the Politburo, the party’s highest body.
The Politburo will make nominations for the “four pillars” – secretary general of the Communist Party, the most powerful post in the country; the president, a largely ceremonial post; the prime minister; and the president of the National Assembly. The nominations are then put to a vote at the party’s congress.
The Communist Party of Vietnam is known for its collective leadership, which means that the main decisions are determined by consensus in the Politburo. The congress agenda is defined by the leadership chosen at the last meeting in 2016.
Factions associated with senior party leaders mean that the race for the most important posts has yet to be resolved.
“The biggest problem that the party faces at the congress is to appoint a new generation of leaders. However, because of the different factions within the party, it has been difficult to reach consensus on someone who can replace the party leader Nguyen Phu Trong, ”Murray Hiebert, a senior associate in the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said in an email interview.
“Party regulations do not allow anyone over the age of 65 and / or have served two terms, but these rules will be waived so that Trong can continue another term, even though he has been in poor health in recent years,” he said. .
According to Tuong Vu, head of the political science department at the University of Oregon, the party’s leadership this year looks more united than it did in 2016.
“The challenge this time for the leadership is that the protégé of current Secretary-General Nguyen Phu Trong has failed to garner enough support to replace him,” he said. If his favorite Politburo partner, Tran Quoc Vuong, fails to garner enough support, this opens up the possibility for Trong to obtain an exemption to serve a third term, he said.
“Due to his poor health and old age, this also creates uncertainty about future succession,” said Vu.
Nguyen Khac Giang, a Vietnamese scholar at Victoria University in New Zealand, also suggested that Trong’s stay could interrupt the succession process.
“Trong would be very powerful and that would prevent the collective leadership standard that the party has always followed.” he said. “It would also set a precedent for others to cling to power and that would make it difficult to build leadership in a sustainable manner and undermine the constitution in the long run.”
Trong benefits from its economic record, said Hiebert.
Vietnam has grown by an average of 6% in the past five years and almost 3% in 2020, when most of its neighbors went into recession thanks to the pandemic, Hiebert said.
“It has continued to attract levels of foreign investment that are the envy of most of its neighbors and has gained additional momentum as companies sought to move part of their supply chain outside China in the wake of the US-China trade war.”
On the debt side, Vietnam has struggled to explore and explore offshore oil and gas due to pressure from China on its activities in the disputed South China Sea, Hiebert said.
Human rights groups have called for a focus on these new leadership issues.
“The Vietnamese authorities’ intolerance of peaceful dissent has peaked under the exit leadership,” claimed Amnesty International. “The appointment of new national leaders offers an invaluable opportunity for Vietnam to change the course of human rights.”
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Associated Press writer Grant Peck in Bangkok contributed to this report.