HANOI, Vietnam (AP) – Nearly 1,600 leading members of the ruling Communist Party in Vietnam are meeting this week to approve future policies and help elect the country’s top leaders amid talks over whether the current party leader will remain.
General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong (76) defied conventional wisdom by winning a second term against a favorite in 2016. Trong made a name for itself by promoting economic growth and waging a popular war on corruption.
It is speculated that the election of the new set of leaders is already a complete deal, but the Vietnamese party is very mysterious and citizens are not even allowed to discuss candidates in public.
The city’s streets are lined with the party’s hammer and sickle flags and posters to promote the week – long congress, which is held every five years. About 4,900 people involved in the event will have to take two coronavirus tests each.
Vietnam is one of the handful of the world’s remaining communist one – party states that tolerate no difference of opinion. However, policies are not completely dictated from above.
In each of Vietnam’s 63 provinces and municipalities, a series of community-level meetings were previously held 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 Politburo, the highest party body.
The Politburo will make nominations for the “four pillars” – general secretary of the Communist Party, the country’s most powerful work; the president, a largely ceremonial post; the prime minister; and the chairman of the National Assembly. The nominations are then put to the 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 Politburo. The agenda for the congress is determined by the leadership elected at the last meeting in 2016.
Factions related to senior party leaders mean that the contest for the best positions may not be over yet.
‘The biggest problem facing the party in Congress is appointing a new generation of leaders. However, due to different factions within the party, it has proved difficult to reach a consensus on who can replace the party leader Nguyen Phu Trong, ”said Murray Hiebert, a senior associate of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said in an email interview.
“The party’s regulations do not allow anyone to serve older than 65 and / or two terms, but these rules will be waived so that Trong can continue for another term, even though he has been in poor health for the past few years,” he said.
According to Tuong Vu, head of the political science department at the University of Oregon, party leadership looks more united this year than in 2016.
“The challenge this time for the leadership is that Nguyen Phu Trong, the current general secretary, could not get enough support to replace him,” he said. If his favorite member of the Politburo, Tran Quoc Vuong, cannot garner enough support, it is possible that Trong will get an exemption to serve a third term, he said.
“Given his poor health and advanced age, it also causes uncertainty about future succession,” Vu said.
Nguyen Khac Giang, a Vietnamese scholar at Victoria University of New Zealand, also suggested that Trong continue to interrupt the succession process.
“Trong would be too powerful and it would hamper the collective leadership norm that the party has always followed.” he said. “He would also set a precedent for others to hold on to power, which would make it difficult to sustainably nurture leadership and harm the constitution in the long run.”
Trong is benefiting from his record in the economy, Hiebert said.
Vietnam has grown by an average of 6% over the past five years and by almost 3% in 2020, when most of its neighbors fell into a recession due to the pandemic, Hiebert said.
“It continued to attract foreign investment levels that envied most of its neighbors and received an extra boost when companies attempted to move part of their supply chain out of China following the US-China trade war.”
On the debit side, Vietnam has experienced difficulties exploring and exploiting oil and gas abroad due to China’s pressure on its activities in the disputed South China Sea, Hiebert said.
Human rights groups urge the new leadership to focus on these issues.
“The Vietnamese authorities’ intolerance of peaceful differences of opinion has peaked among the outgoing leadership,” Amnesty International claims. “The appointment of new national leaders provides a valuable opportunity for Vietnam to change course on human rights.”
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Associated Press author Grant Peck in Bangkok contributed to this report.