HANOI, Vietnam (AP) – Nearly 1,600 leading members of the ruling Communist Party in Vietnam are meeting this week to approve future policy and help select the nation’s most important leaders amid talks over whether the current leader of Vietnam the party will remain.
Secretary-General Nguyen Phu Trong, 76, defied conventional wisdom by winning a second term in 2016 against a favored opponent. Trong made his name by presiding over economic growth and waging a popular war against corruption.
It has been speculated that the selection of the new group of leaders is already an agreement, but the Vietnamese party is extremely secretive and citizens are not even allowed to publicly discuss the candidates.
The city’s streets are lined with party flags and hammer and sickle posters to promote the one-week congress, which is held every five years. Approximately 4,900 people involved in the event must take two coronavirus tests each.
Vietnam is one of the few remaining communist states in the world that does not tolerate any dissent. However, politics is not completely dictated from above.
A series of community-level meetings were held earlier in each of Vietnam’s 63 provinces and municipalities to select the 1,587 delegates. They will elect the 200-member Central Committee, which will choose between 15 and 19 of its members to serve on the Political Bureau, the party’s highest body.
The Political Bureau will make nominations for “the four pillars” – general secretary of the Communist Party, the most powerful office in the country; the president, a largely ceremonial post; the prime minister; and the president of the National Assembly. Nominations are then put to a vote in the party congress.
The Communist Party of Vietnam is known for its collective leadership, which means that key decisions are determined by consensus in the Political Bureau. The agenda of the congress is set by the elected leadership at the last meeting in 2016.
The factions associated with senior party leaders mean that the competition for the most important jobs cannot yet be resolved.
“The biggest problem facing the party in Congress is the appointment of a new generation of leaders. However, due to various factions within the party, it proved difficult to reach a consensus on someone to replace the party leader, Nguyen Phu Trong, “said Murray Hiebert, senior associate of the Southeast Asia Program. at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, he said in an email interview.
“The party’s regulations do not allow anyone who is over 65 and / or has served two terms, but these rules will be dropped so that Trong can continue another term, even if he has suffered health problems in recent years.” , he said.
According to Tuong Vu, head of the political science department at the University of Oregon, this year’s party leadership looks more united than in 2016.
“The challenge this time for the leadership is that the protégé of current Secretary-General Nguyen Phu Trong has failed to get enough support to replace him,” he said. If Tran Quoc Vuong, his favorite colleague, a member of the Political Bureau, cannot get enough support, it opens the possibility for Trong to get an exemption to fulfill a third term, he said.
“Given his poor health and old age, this also generates uncertainty about his future succession,” Vu said.
Nguyen Khac Giang, a Vietnamese business scholar at Victoria University in New Zealand, also suggested that Trong’s stay could disrupt the succession process.
“Trong would be too strong and that would hinder the norm of collective leadership that the party has always respected.” he said. “It would also set a precedent for others to cling to power and this would make it difficult for the leadership to sustain itself and damage the constitution in the long run.”
Trong is benefiting from its economic performance, Hiebert said.
Vietnam has grown by an average of 6 percent in the past five years and nearly 3 percent in 2020, when most of its neighbors fell into recession due to the pandemic, Hiebert said.
“It has continued to attract levels of foreign investment that are the envy of most of its neighbors and gained further momentum as companies sought to move some of their supply chain from China following the US-China trade war.”
In terms of flow, Vietnam has encountered difficulties in exploring and exploiting offshore oil and gas due to Chinese pressure on its activities in the South China Sea dispute, Hiebert said.
Human rights groups have called for the new leadership to focus on these issues.
“The Vietnamese authorities’ intolerance of peaceful dissent has reached its peak,” Amnesty International said. “The appointment of new national leaders provides an invaluable opportunity for Vietnam to change the course of human rights.”
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Associated Press writer Grant Peck of Bangkok contributed to this report.