By Francesco Guarascio and Khanh Vu
HANOI (Reuters) – Communist-ruled Vietnam is seeking its third president in little more than a year after the resignation of Vo Van Thuong, who was only elected last year after the sudden dismissal of his predecessor.
With accumulated foreign direct investment higher than its gross domestic product, Vietnam’s stability is crucial to multinationals with large operations in the Southeast Asian manufacturing hub, including Samsung Electronics, which ships from Vietnam half of its smartphones, and Apple, which has many key suppliers in the country.
That stability, which has been guaranteed for decades by a state tightly controlled by the Communist Party, now looks less certain, analysts say, although they agree the current leadership changes will not impact the country’s key policies, including its “bamboo diplomacy” aimed at keeping good relations with the United States and China at the same time.
The government statement did not elaborate on Thuong’s shortcomings, but major leadership changes in the one-party state have recently been linked to the wide-ranging “blazing furnace” anti-bribery campaign, launched in 2016 by party chief Nguyen Phu Trong.
It aims to eradicate corruption so widespread that in some provinces up to 90% of applicants for land certificates paid a bribe, according to a report published in March 2023 by the U.N. Development Programme and other organisations.
The campaign intensified over the last two years, with critics saying it has been increasingly used for political purposes by party factions competing for power.
Vietnam’s foreign ministry on Friday denied that decisions under the anti-graft drive were politically motivated.
Thuong, 53, stands accused of having violated party rules, according to a Communist Party statement issued on Wednesday, which did not clarify what exactly he did wrong.
He quit days after police announced the arrest for alleged corruption a decade ago of a former head of central Vietnam’s Quang Ngai province, who served while Thuong was party chief there.
WHO COULD BE VO VAN THUONG’S SUCCESSOR?
Vietnam’s parliament accepted Thuong’s resignation on Thursday, confirming a Reuters report from Sunday. It named Vice President Vo Thi Anh Xuan as acting president until the party decides the next candidate.
Xuan also stepped in last year to temporarily replace the suddenly dismissed former president, Nguyen Xuan Phuc.
At that time it took the party a month and a half to pick Thuong, who at the time of his election had been widely seen as a close ally to the party chief Trong.
Leading candidates for the permanent position include the powerful minister of public security, To Lam, and party veteran Truong Thi Mai, according to multiple analysts.
However, the former may be interested in the far more powerful position of party chief, a role that is up for grabs in 2026 when Trong’s third mandate ends, but that the ageing leader may make available earlier, officials and analysts say.
Mai’s job as permanent member of the secretariat of the party’s central committee had been seen at risk amid the latest leadership reshuffle, according to analysts, officials and diplomats, but no decision was announced about her on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio @fraguarascio; Editing by Nick Macfie, William Mallard and Neil Fullick)
