HO CHI MINH CITY, VIETNAM/WASHINGTON — Experts say Vietnamese President To Lam, now also Vietnam’s acting general secretary, has used the country’s anticorruption campaign to oust political rivals and is shifting from Hanoi’s tradition of collective leadership toward a more authoritarian regime.
Lam, a former public security minister, had been named president in May and took on the new post earlier this month after the death of 80-year-old General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.
Zachary Abuza, a professor at Washington’s National War College, told VOA July 24 Lam will likely attempt to retain the presidency and is in a powerful position to become general secretary at the next leadership turnover during the January 2026 National Assembly meeting.
“I think that the Central Committee and Politburo have more or less come to endorse To Lam as the next general secretary,” he said.
After historic instability that led to seven out of 18 Politburo members being “forced to resign,” Hanoi leadership wants to enter a more stable period, Abuza said. Politburo members who resigned after corruption investigations included former president Vo Van Thuong and former National Assembly Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue. Both were considered top candidates for the general secretaryship, the country’s most powerful position.
In addition, Lam has installed proteges in powerful positions, Abuza said. Luong Tam Quang, Lam’s deputy minister at the public security ministry, took on the lead role at the ministry after Lam became president.
The Communist Party’s central office also said June 3 that Deputy Public Security Minister Nguyen Duy Ngoc had been chosen chief of the Party Central Committee Office, a critical position according to Abuza.
“This is the guy who sets the agenda for the 180-person Central Committee. He convenes them, he sets up the meetings … he is the person that all information goes through to the central committee members – it’s just an incredibly powerful position, even if it seems, like, very mundane. Power is in those mundane positions.”
“There’s going to be a lot of institutional loyalty to [Lam],” Abuza said. “By seating his proteges in key positions he is in a very, very strong position.”
Power consolidation
Duy Hoang, executive director of the banned Viet Tan party, told VOA from the United States July 22 that “To Lam has proven that he’s very effective at sidelining rivals and consolidating power.”
Hoang said it is likely that Lam will be able to hold on to the general secretary and president roles, which would degrade the country’s precedent of dividing power. Those two roles, along with those of prime minister and National Assembly chairman are the “four pillars” at the top of the country’s political hierarchy.
After Trong’s death, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh is the only remaining individual in a “four pillar” position who has not died during his five-year term or resigned after facing corruption charges. Finally, Tran Thanh Man has been National Assembly chairman since Hue, his predecessor, left his post.
“Up until now,” Hoang said, “communist Vietnam has had a collective leadership where the general secretary was the first of equals. At this rate, To Lam is not going to have any equals.”
Le Cong Dinh, Ho Chi Minh City-based lawyer and human rights advocate, also predicted Lam’s ascendancy.
“I believe that President To Lam will strengthen his powerful position as heads of both the state and the ruling party,” Dinh wrote on Telegram July 22.
While the presidency is often described as a figurehead role, Abuza said the position can be powerful. He said Lam likely wishes to hold onto the presidency to gain a foothold outside the country, as has Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“I think he very much wants it in the way that Xi Jinping uses it for diplomatic reasons. It gives him an international perch,” Abuza said. “If anyone wants to emulate Xi Jinping in that regard, it’s To Lam.”
Authoritarian leanings
Experts and activists described a harsh crackdown on civil society under Lam’s tenure as public security minister.
Do Nguyen Mai Khoi, a Vietnamese singer and activist, described harassment after performances, eviction from residences, multiple police detentions, and threats of jailing to VOA. She moved to the U.S. in 2019, fearing imprisonment in Vietnam.
“Since To Lam became the Minister of Public Security, Vietnam became a top jailer of political activists and journalists,” she wrote over Signal July 24.
“To Lam has conducted the public security [ministry] to arrest so many dissidents, activists, independent journalists, facebookers [sic] and bloggers,” she wrote.
“I had to leave the country before it [arrest] would happen, but many of my friends have been arrested since I left,” she wrote, mentioning jailed journalist Pham Doan Trang along with fellow activists, journalists, and an independent political candidate.
Mai Khoi wrote that she worries the situation in Vietnam will worsen and sees her contacts in Vietnam staying silent in the tenuous environment.
“Before, To Lam had to wait for Nguyen Phu Trong to approve the brutal decisions to crack down on civil society, now he doesn’t need to wait,” she wrote. “He’s leading Vietnam from a one party police state to become authoritarian. The Vietnamese human rights situation will get even worse.”
Dinh in Ho Chi Minh City said that civil society has been unable to operate for the past two years.
“No more independent voices are allowed to make sure that the entire people follow what the ruling party wants to see,” he wrote.
Abuza described waves of repression during Lam’s run as public security minister which targeted lawyers, religious groups, environmentalists, social media dissent, and most recently labor reformers. Human Rights Watch reported in June that 147 out of 164 political prisoners in Vietnam, were convicted and sentenced under Lam’s watch for exercising basic civil and political rights.
“He cares about power. He’s clearly an authoritarian,” he said of To Lam. “This is not going to be a great period of time for civil society, or activists, or people advocating free speech.”
Trong – anticorruption, political orthodoxy
Specialists speaking to VOA Vietnamese stressed Trong’s commitment to his “blazing furnace” anticorruption campaign, although some cast doubt on its effectiveness, along with his ideological orthodoxy.
Abuza called him “the last of his kind, a lifelong communist ideologue, a true believer” who, outside of five years as National Assembly chairman, held party positions. He said Trong would be remembered for the anticorruption campaign but said the campaign “failed.”
“Corruption remains endemic, the party is weaker and more suspicious because of it, and it exposed the rot across the entire senior leadership. If anything, the campaign that he thought would legitimize the party, left it even more delegitimized,” Abuza said.
Ha Hoang Hop, chairman of Hanoi-based Think Tank VietKnow, said people are satisfied to see corrupt officials arrested but, as they are not widely involved in anticorruption projects are not sure what its achievements are and have questions over the rule of law in corruption cases with “no satisfactory answer.”
He said the Politburo “is cleaner as a number of corrupt members have been removed” but now must promote governance capacity and enhance transparency and accountability and adjust anticorruption work to achieve “truly positive results.”
Vu Duc Khanh, adjunct professor at Ottawa University, called Trong a “steadfast, dogmatic and blind communist” who continued to exhort to protect socialism and the party even though, Khanh said, “he knew that most of his comrades no longer believed in socialism.”
On the anticorruption campaign, Khanh described corruption as “the cancer of the regime,” adding that without changing the regime, the party “will never be clean.”
He also pointed to Trong’s role as initiator of “bamboo diplomacy,” referring to Vietnam’s strategy of balancing ties with superpowers, but he described it as “nothing new” and “just a ‘trick for survival’ before a new world order is born.”
Linh Dan of VOA Vietnamese reported from Washington.
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