[UPDATE] Vietnam’s Leader Dies
End of reformist crusade?
By: David Brown
As Asia Sentinel reported earlier today, July 18, a communique issued on July 18 strongly suggested that Vietnam’s top leader, Nguyễn Phú Trọng, was on his deathbed. It has since been reported that Trọng, who has been Secretary General of the nation’s Communist Party since 2011, has died.
After turning back a challenger on the eve of the party’s 2016 congress in 2016 and notwithstanding a stroke in mid-2019, Trong had until recent months exercised unrivaled power.
Our original story picks up here. This spring, reports circulated that Trong has been working from a suite in the ICU of Hanoi’s Military Hospital 108 and spending his nights there “just in case” immediate medical attention is necessary. He missed meetings with several visiting foreign leaders early this year, and in 2023 cancelled a planned visit to the United States. A photo of Trọng and Vladimir Putin taken on June 20 during Putin’s brief visit shows Trọng slumping in his chair; unsurprisingly, the Sputnik News photo was not published by Vietnamese media.
The communique issued by top party organs is unprecedented. “In order for the Secretary General to concentrate on regaining his health, the Politburo has assigned State President Tô Lâm to manage the Party’s Central Committee, Politburo and Secretariat.” Vietnamese newspapers report (of course) that on receiving this assignment, Lâm expressed firm resolve to continue Trọng’s fight against corruption and ‘negative behavior’ by party members.
Trọng’s long tenure as party chief has been marked by an unflagging campaign to cleanse Vietnam’s ruling (and only) party of backsliders. He is universally acknowledged as a man of unblemished integrity. As Asia Sentinel reported in 2022, “Trọng is the real deal, a long-term leader without a trace of grandiosity. His grandfatherly bearing and modest lifestyle are deceptive; he’s tough as nails. For a decade, he’s shown no mercy when party heavyweights, even long-time comrades, are revealed to have been trading favors for cash or – perhaps worse – found to be entertaining doubts about Marxist-Leninist doctrine.
In that story, we commented that “In an era of cynicism, [Trọng] is a true believer [who] has never wavered in his conviction that only socialism – the Leninist sort, in which a vanguard party “actualizes the people’s right to mastery” – can lead Vietnam to “a qualitatively new type of society…that actively harnesses people’s creativity, support and active participation.
“Trong had concluded . . . that the Party must also demonstrate its moral legitimacy by weeding out rent-seekers and backsliders. “A large number of cadre have been degraded in political ideology, ethics, and lifestyle,” Trọng told the CPV’s central committee in October 2016. These cadres go so far as to “demand ‘pluralism,’ clamor for the ‘separation of powers’ and [praise] ‘civil society.’ … They take advantage of the media and social networks to deny the Party’s leadership role.”
Six years later, by the General Secretary’s count nearly 17,000 cases of corruption or abuse of position had been prosecuted, [and] 175,000 CPV members disciplined or punished. Reflecting on the early 2023 dismissal of two deputy prime ministers and Nguyễn Văn Phúc, the State President, we speculated that Trọng had sensed that he was running out of time.
It now seems obvious that as Trọng was slowed by illness, Tô Lâm, then Minister of Public Security, seized an opportunity to sideline others who might aspire to succeed Trọng as party leader. One by one, he connected would-be candidates for the job to scandals dating back a decade or more. Tainted by evidence deployed by police investigators, Võ Văn Thưởng, Phúc’s successor as State President (and reportedly Trọng’s preferred successor), and then the talented head of the National Assembly, Vương Đình Huệ, submitted their resignations from state and party positions and were “allowed to retire.” Others followed. Now only one obstacle remains to Minister Lâm’s advance to the party’s top job: Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính.
Both Lâm and Chính have spent considerable time in the Ministry of Public Security, but that does not make them allies. Chính left MPS in 2011 to serve successively as party chief in Quảng Ninh province and then as key staff in the Party Secretariat before his appointment as Prime Minister in May 2021. Lâm meanwhile served as a vice minister of Public Security from 2010 to 2016, and then as minister until named State President in May 2024. Obviously, Lâm had an excellent opportunity to rebuild MPS – particularly its intelligence gathering mission – from the ground up, and reportedly did just that.
For Nguyễn Phú Trọng, the death watch has begun. The same bulletin that said he’d been relieved of his normal duties in order to concentrate on recovering his health also announced that Trọng has been awarded the “Gold Star” medal. Vietnam’s highest award is normally awarded posthumously.
David Brown is a former US diplomat with extensive experience in Vietnam