While General Tô Lâm’s ascension to the top position in Vietnamese politics ended months of political turmoil and power struggles, it did not end the feared anti-corruption campaign of his late predecessor, Nguyễn Phú Trọng, which is likely to continue as the new leader seeks to make good on his promise to stamp out corruption, even if the economy suffers, at least in the short term.
The new party secretary, 67-year-old Lam, will also serve as president at least until the next Communist Party congress in early 2026 and will continue to use the fight against corruption to consolidate his power.
His pragmatic approach to ideology and diplomacy could help Vietnam pursue its national interests more confidently while navigating the pitfalls of the US-China rivalry. But the fight against corruption is of paramount importance. But there are pitfalls here too.
Tireless fight against corruption
Lâm’s promise to “do everything” to fight corruption is further weakening the Vietnamese state’s executive branch due to mass layoffs and the dismissal of high-ranking ministers.
On the very first day of Lâm’s tenure as general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), an investigation into high-level allegations of “violations of party rules” – a euphemism for corruption – led to the ousting of a deputy prime minister, a junior minister and two provincial-level party chiefs.
All four were dismissed from the CPV Central Committee on August 3. That same day, Lâm unveiled his policies in a keynote speech to the party, pledging to continue the fight against corruption. As security minister under the late Nguyễn Phú Trọng, he helped implement that fight.
How long will the cleanup take?
However, the recent dismissal of Deputy Prime Minister Le Minh Khai has caused consternation in the business community in Vietnam and abroad. The deputy prime minister was responsible for a wide range of portfolios, including macroeconomic policy, the national budget, the banking system and the stock exchange. Khai had represented Vietnam at an international conference in Tokyo in June and met with Jared Bernstein, chairman of the US Economic Advisory Council in Washington, DC, the same month. Khai’s dismissal from the Central Committee put further pressure on the government of Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chính.
Since 2023, Chính has already lost two MPs (Phạm Bình Minh and Vũ Đức Đam) and numerous ministers. This has led to speculation among Vietnamese observers who wondered whether the government was unable to function properly due to corruption – all sacked politicians were publicly accused of being involved in shady deals with companies – or whether decision-making was paralyzed by the anti-corruption crackdown, as some bureaucrats shied away from making decisions and clashed with anti-corruption authorities.
But Lâm is sticking to his desire to carry out the campaign because “the blazing furnace will play an important role in his process of consolidating power,” wrote Vietnam observer Alexander Vuving, professor at the Asia Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Hawaii (USA), on X.
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Moreover, Lâm said, the fight against corruption also brings recognition and approval from the public and the international community. This makes it a source of new legitimacy for him and his subordinates, mainly young police generals who have recently been promoted to senior positions in the party. They will be very busy in the coming months, as there are still many cases of large-scale corruption that are being investigated.
Some commentators say that Lam’s alleged “pragmatic authoritarianism” is good for Vietnam’s economic growth. But as mentioned above, the purge of key economic policymakers in the Nguyễn Phú Trọng government has already caused short-term concern among Vietnamese businesspeople and foreign investors. To counteract this, Lam has signaled that he wants to be a new type of leader who governs the country according to the “rule of law.”
One of the first tasks Lâm has tackled as party leader so far has been to chair the party’s Judiciary Committee meeting to launch legal reform for Vietnam’s courts, procuratorates and law enforcement agencies. His vision is for such reform to take shape this year and run until 2030 to “redefine the roles between the three branches of government: the legislature, the judiciary and the executive.”
Although it is not a separation of powers in the Western democratic sense, the reform, if implemented properly, could create a semblance of checks and balances within Vietnam’s Leninist system. But internal reforms will not change the human rights situation, as the Ministry of Public Security was given more powers under the new Basic Security Law in July this year. This month, activist Nguyễn Chí Tuyến, one of 269 people arrested in recent years, is due to go on trial for anti-state acts, Human Rights Watch reported.
Lâm’s energetic agenda also touches on the eternal question of Vietnam’s socialist path. This issue has been an open question for more than three decades, since the beginning of the reform era in the late 1980s. The recent decision by the US Department of Commerce to reject Vietnam’s request to change its status as a non-market economy after a one-year review was a blow to Hanoi’s reform faith and revealed the painful truth that Vietnam cannot simultaneously be a socialist-oriented market economy, in which the state dictates and intervenes, and a market economy.
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A recent article published in Vietnamese state media states:
Also notable is that when it comes to the regime’s official history, Lâm has removed the traditional rhetoric about “heroic anti-American resistance,” leaving only one sentence about “Vietnamese victory over the French-colonial war of aggression.” Combined with his decision to send a Vietnamese coast guard ship to support the Philippine Navy earlier this month to conduct firefighting and search-and-rescue exercises off the coast of Manila, it is clear that under Lam’s leadership, Vietnam is confident it can maintain its strategic autonomy—which in practice means a closer relationship with the U.S. and its allies to counterbalance China’s growing power in the region while maintaining close ties with Vietnam’s northern neighbor.
Lâm visited Beijing this week, his first state visit abroad, an indication of the importance both Vietnam and China attach to their bilateral relations, The Associated Press reported. Lâm is also expected to attend the annual United Nations General Assembly in September, after which he is expected to meet with U.S. President Biden.
Giang Nguyen is a visiting lecturer at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. He was previously Vietnamese editor of the BBC in London.
Copyright: NPR
