Vietnam Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong dies at 80

FILE PHOTO: General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Nguyen Phu Trong speaks to the media in Hanoi, September 10, 2023. The powerful leader of Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party has died, state media said Friday, July 19, 2024. (Luong Thai Linh/AP Photo, File)

HANOI, Vietnam — Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party and the country’s most powerful politician, has died at age 80 after months of illness, state media reported Friday.

Nhan Dan reported: “General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Nguyen Phu Trong died at 13:38 on July 19, 2024 at the 108th Central Military Hospital due to old age and serious illness.”

State media said there would be a state funeral.

Nguyen Phu Trong has dominated Vietnamese politics since he was elected general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam in 2011. During his tenure, he has worked to consolidate the power of the Communist Party of Vietnam in Vietnam’s one-party political system. In the decade before his rise to the top of Vietnam’s political arena, the balance of power shifted more towards the government faction led by then-Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.

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Born in Hanoi in 1944, Nguyen Phu Trong is a Marxist-Leninist theorist with a degree in philosophy who joined the Communist Party at age 22. He sees corruption as the biggest threat to the party’s legitimacy.

“A country without discipline will be chaotic and unstable,” Nguyen Phu Trong said after being re-elected as general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam in 2016. Vietnam officially has no supreme leader, but the general secretary of the Communist Party is traditionally seen as the most powerful person.

He launched a massive anti-corruption campaign dubbed the “Crucible of Fire,” in which business and political elites have been burned. Thousands of party officials have been disciplined since 2016. They include former presidents Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Vo Van Thang, and former speaker of the National Assembly Vuong Dinh Hue. In total, eight Politburo members have been removed on corruption charges, compared to none between 1986 and 2016.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “deeply saddened” by Trong’s death, deputy UN spokesman Farhan Haq said, calling him a “pivotal figure in Vietnam’s recent history”.

Guterres said that during Nguyen Phu Trong’s tenure as President and General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, “Vietnam continued its extraordinary development journey, becoming one of the fastest growing economies in the world and an important partner of the United Nations.”

Trong studied in the Soviet Union from 1981 to 1983, and there was speculation at the time that under his leadership, Vietnam would move closer to Russia and China. However, the Southeast Asian country pursued a pragmatic policy of “bamboo diplomacy,” a term coined by Trong to refer to the flexibility of bamboo, which can bend but not break amid shifting geopolitical headwinds.

read: Vietnam’s “bamboo diplomacy” enters a new stage

Vietnam has traditional ties with its much larger neighbor China, despite disagreements over sovereignty in the South China Sea. But it has also moved closer to the United States, elevating its relationship with its former Vietnam War rival to its highest diplomatic status, a comprehensive strategic partnership.

Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow at the Vietnam Program at the Yusof Ishak Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, said Trong’s legacy was mixed, with the unintended consequence of the anti-corruption campaign being the erosion of the party’s internal institutions, which he said were the bedrock for ensuring a balance of power between different factions.

“Vietnam is becoming more and more like China, where institutions and norms are not as important as individual power,” Jiang said.

On July 18, President To Lin was named interim party chairman while Nguyen Phu Trong was treated for ill health. As Vietnam’s top security official, To Lin led the anti-corruption campaign until he assumed the presidency in May after his predecessor resigned due to his involvement in corruption.

The Politburo asked Lam to “preside over the work of the party’s Central Committee, Politburo and Secretariat,” according to a statement from the party’s central office, marking the first official confirmation of Trong’s health.

Rumors about his health have circulated in Vietnamese politics since he was first hospitalized in 2019, and he recently appeared extremely weak during a meeting with visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The death of Nguyen Phu Trong has left a huge political vacuum in Vietnam. Although he is widely seen as the likely next general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Nguyen Phu Trong predicted “a very uncertain period” in Vietnamese politics because the country’s governance norms and institutions are “very unstable.”

“Now it’s not just about rules or norms, but also about who has the most power,” Jiang said.

The Communist Party of China’s Central Committee sent a condolence message to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam and expressed “deep condolences” for the death of Nguyen Phu Trong, Xinhua news agency reported on Friday.