Vietnam’s president is confirmed as the new Communist Party chief — the country’s most powerful role

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Vietnamese President To Lam was confirmed Saturday as the new chief of the Communist Party after his predecessor died July 19.

Lam will be the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, the country’s most powerful political role, state media said. It was unclear if Lam will stay in his role as president.

The previous general secretary, Nguyen Phu Trong, dominated Vietnamese politics since he became party chief in 2011. He was elected to a third term as general secretary in 2021. He was an ideologue who viewed corruption as the gravest threat facing the party.

In his first speech as the Communist Party chief, Lam said that him taking the reigns was because of “an urgent need to ensure the leadership of the party.”

Lam said he would maintain the legacies of his predecessor, notably the anti-corruption campaign that has rocked the country’s political and business elites and a pragmatic approach to foreign policy known as bamboo diplomacy — a phrase coined by Trong referring to the plant’s flexibility, bending but not breaking in the shifting headwinds of global geopolitics.

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Lam spent over four decades in the Ministry of Public Security before becoming the minister in 2016. As Vietnam’s top security official, Lam led Trong’s sweeping anti-graft campaign until May, when he became president following the resignation of his predecessor, who stepped down after being caught by the campaign.

Big changes in Vietnam’s strategic approach are unlikely, said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow in the Vietnam Studies Program at Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute, but Lam’s relative newness to governing meant that it remains to be seen how he will lead.

Given the current composition of the upper echelons of Vietnamese politics, Giang said it was possible that Lam’s promotion could mean an end to the internal fighting that has rocked the party for several years.

“To Lam is the new unchallenged power who will dominate Vietnamese politics in the years, if not a decade, ahead,” he said.

Giang said the party will vote for the general secretary again in 2026, and Lam’s performance will be a factor.

“For now, however, it seems a new era has come,” he said.