HANOI, Vietnam (AP) – Nearly 1,600 top members of Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party are meeting this week to approve future policy and help select the nation’s top leaders amid talk about whether the current party leader will stay.
Secretary-General Nguyen Phu Trong, 76, challenged conventional wisdom by winning a second term in 2016 against a favored opponent. Trong has become famous 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 a done deal, but the Vietnamese party is very secretive and citizens are not even allowed to publicly discuss the candidates.
The city streets are lined with sickle flags and posters and the party poster to promote the one-week congress held every five years. About 4,900 people involved in the event must each take two coronavirus tests.
Vietnam is one of the few single-party 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 previously held in each of Vietnam’s 63 provinces and municipalities to select the 1,587 delegates. They will elect the central committee of 200 members, which will choose between 15 and 19 of its members to form part of the Politburo, the party’s highest body.
The Politburo will make nominations to the “four pillars”: general secretary of the Communist Party, the most powerful job in the country; the president, a mainly ceremonial place; the prime minister; and the President of the National Assembly. Nominations are put to a vote in the party congress.
The Communist Party of Vietnam is known for its collective leadership, meaning that key decisions are determined by consensus in the Politburo. The agenda of the congress is set by the direction chosen at the last meeting in 2016.
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 appointing a new generation of leaders. However, due to the different factions of the party, it has proved difficult to reach consensus on someone who can replace the party leader, Nguyen. Phu Trong, ”Murray Hiebert, a senior partner in the Southeast Asian 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 to serve and / or have served two terms, but these rules will be dispensed with so that Trong can continue another term, even though it has been bad in recent years.” He said.
According to Tuong Vu, head of the political science department at the University of Oregon, party leadership this year looks more united than in 2016.
“The challenge for the leadership this time is that the protégé of current Secretary-General Nguyen Phu Trong has not gotten enough support to replace him,” he said. If his affiliate Tran Quoc Vuong, a member of the Politburo, cannot get enough support, it opens the possibility for Trong to get an exemption to serve a third term, he said.
“Given his poor health and advanced age, this also raises uncertainties about future succession,” Vu said.
Nguyen Khac Giang, a Vietnam scholar at the University of New Zealand, Victoria, also suggested that Trong’s tenure could alter the succession process.
“Trong would be too powerful and this would hamper the norm of collective leadership that the party has always been following.” He said. “It would also set a precedent for others to cling to power and this would hinder the sustainable preparation of leadership and harm the constitution in the long run.”
Trong benefits from its economic history, Hiebert said.
Vietnam has grown by an average of 6% in the last five years and nearly 3% in 2020, when most of its neighbors fell into recession thanks to the pandemic, Hiebert said.
“It continued to attract levels of foreign investment that are the envy of most of its neighbors and gained additional momentum as companies tried to move part of their supply chain out of China in the wake of the US trade war. -China “.
On the debit side, Vietnam faced difficulties in exploring and exploiting offshore oil and gas due to pressure from China over its activities in the disputed South China Sea, Hiebert said.
Human rights groups urged the new leadership to focus on these issues.
“The intolerance of the Vietnamese authorities to peaceful dissent has peaked during the outgoing leadership,” Amnesty International said. “The appointment of new national leaders provides an invaluable opportunity for Vietnam to change the course of human rights.”
___
Associated Press writer Grant Peck in Bangkok contributed to this report.