The president of Vietnam, Vo Van Thuong, submitted his resignation this Wednesday, forced by suspicions of corruption. The Central Committee of the Communist Party has already accepted his resignation from the position, which he had assumed a little over a year ago. The decision must be ratified this Thursday in a special session of the National Assembly in Hanoi. Until his successor is elected, the vice president, Vo Thi Anh Xuan, will occupy the head of state, in accordance with the Vietnamese Constitution.
The irregularities committed by Thuong have not been revealed, but could have to do with the recent bribery investigation of two infrastructure construction companies a decade ago. The current president was then provincial head in one of the three central provinces affected.
According to the Vietnamese News Agency, Vo Van Thuong would not have acted with the exemplarity expected of a head of state. "Comrade Vo Van Thuong's faults have been frowned upon by public opinion, affecting the reputation of the Party, the State and his own," reads the official agency, as a political epitaph. "Fully aware of his responsibility, he has resigned from his duties."
Vo Van Thuong's fall from grace is especially dramatic, given that he is a rising political star. At 53 years old, Thuong was seen as a possible replacement for the most powerful man in the country, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Nguyen Phu Trong. However, the anti-corruption crusade inspired by the latter is behind his political end. This campaign, with great support among the population, had already caused the resignation of his predecessor, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, in 2023.
Thuong was one of the youngest leaders of the party and was considered a protégé of Nguyen Phu Trong, so his fall sends the message that no one is safe from the purge, which in recent years has taken over ministers and heads of large companies. He also raises the stakes about the new guard that could take over in Vietnam at the single party congress scheduled for 2026, given that Trong - a philologist politically trained in the former Soviet Union - is already 79 years old.
The politburo in Vietnam has sixteen members, but the real power is distributed among four positions, with the president being the third in importance - with the most ceremonial responsibilities - behind the prime minister and ahead of the president of the Assembly.
At the end of last year, the former president received his counterparts from the United States, Joe Biden, and China, Xi Jinping, in Hanoi. He had also extended an invitation to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The greats of this world today court a nation that emerged devastated from decades of war. Vietnam already has one hundred million inhabitants and an economy that, with an annual growth of 6%, runs like a motorcycle (motorcycles, ubiquitous, continue to be the favorite vehicle of the Vietnamese). Rumors about changes in the communist leadership already led the Vietnamese stock market to record trading figures this Monday.
The political rivalry between Beijing and Washington, together with the rigor of the Chinese authorities during the pandemic, has led many American companies to reduce their exposure to the Asian giant. And the "China 1" principle has surely benefited Vietnam more than any other manufacturing destination. In this way, Vietnam and the United States have gone from being enemies to leading trading partners in fifty years.
There is no evidence that there were underlying political reasons for Thoung's replacement, although he was part of the leadership that makes major foreign policy decisions.
