To Lam moves to secure full term at pinnacle of Vietnamese power

To Lam’s recent relinquishing of the presidency of Vietnam is no sign of weakness or a challenge to his leadership. It was a logical step toward securing a full term as Communist Party general secretary.

In a system that prides itself on collective leadership, there was consternation within the Communist Party of Vietnam, or CPV, about Lam’s rapid accumulation of power over the past year. The National Assembly has been signaling since August that this transfer of power would happen.

For Lam, the presidency was just a stepping stone.

While he seemed to enjoy the diplomatic function and traveled to eight countries in his brief five month tenure, and there’s a logic to the most powerful person being the country’s top representative, his priority is getting elected to a full term with his team at the 14th Party Congress in January 2026.

While Lam may be the CPV general secretary, he still needs the support of the party Central Committee, and there are other power centers that he has to contend with.

He has nothing like Xi Jinping’s hold over the Communist Party of China.

Stacking the Politburo

The 18-member Politburo elected at the 13th Party Congress in January 2021 has fallen to a low of 12 members. Lam has moved to fill the ranks.

There have been five new Politburo members elected since May, including his protege, Luong Tam Quang at the Ministry of Public Security, or MPS.

Lam understands that the party’s legitimacy comes through performance.

Lam is not just stacking the Politburo; he’s appointing allies, especially those from his home province of Hung Yen, across key party positions.

Lam installed another MPS deputy, Nguyen Duy Ngoc, as the head of the Central Committee office, a very powerful behind-the-scenes position in personnel issues and agenda setting.

Lam now has his eyes and ears at the nerve center in the Central Committee. Ngoc also serves on the CPV’s 12-member Secretariat, which runs the party’s day-to-day affairs.

Institutional checks

Also new to the Secretariat is Le Minh Tri, who heads the Central Committee’s Civil Affairs Committee and is the prosecutor general of the Supreme People’s Procuracy.

Le Hoai Trung, Lam’s top foreign policy adviser, who has been by his side in all foreign trips and meetings, also serves on the Secretariat.

Lam is also moving to neutralize opposition. He appointed Vu Hong Van, a police major general also from Hung Yen, as deputy chairman of the Central Inspection Commission.

Its chairman, Tran Cam Tu, is the one person on the Politburo who could cause the general secretary some trouble. He heads an investigative body with powers to investigate senior leadership that’s beyond Lam’s control.

And as a reminder that Lam is not in complete control, on Oct. 25, the Politburo elected Tu as the standing chairman of the Secretariat, over Lam’s preferred candidate, Nguyen Duy Ngoc.

The other institutional check is the People’s Army.

While armies tend to dominate politics in Southeast Asia, in Vietnam, power is the security police, a reflection of the regime’s fear of popular color revolutions.

In addition to Lam and Luong Tam Quang, there are four other members of the Politburo who came up through the Ministry of Public Security.

Many have looked to the military as an institutional check on the MPS, which is why the election of Luong Cuong to the presidency on Oct. 21 is seen as so important.

Gen. Cuong is a career political commissar, becoming the chief of the Vietnam People’s Army’s General Political Department in 2016. As the top party official in the military, he also served on the Secretariat since 2016, becoming its standing chairman when Truong Thi Mai was forced to resign in May.

In addition to Cuong, Minister of National Defense Phan Van Giang serves on the Politburo.

Shoring up army ties

Lam has been trying to build ties to the military.

As general secretary, he is concurrently the chairman of the Central Military Commission, the highest defense decision-making body. In that capacity, he routinely meets with different military units and leadership.

Lam’s also trying to carefully make his mark on personnel. He promoted Trinh Van Quyet, the current head of the General Political Department, to the Secretariat.

He promoted three other senior officers from Hung Yen Province, including Deputy Minister of National Defense Hoang Xuan Chien, and Lt. General Nguyen Hong Thai, the commander of Military Region 1, which borders China.

Even if the generals aren’t happy with a cop as chairman of the Central Military Commission, Lam is slowly putting his people into leadership positions.

And all this matters, because the army comprises 11-13% on the Central Committee, the largest single bloc.

Lam understands that getting allies into key positions should make himself unassailable just over a year from now at the 14th Congress.

Through Luong Tam Quang, he can continue to investigate rivals. Other allies are in charge of personnel selection and drafting key party documents.

The Communist Party of Vietnam has a culture of collective leadership – a norm that Lam briefly violated.

By ceding the presidency, especially to a military man, he neutralizes some of the opposition to him, while giving up very little real power.

In his consolidation of power, Lam took down eight different rivals on the Politburo since December 2022, a period of unprecedented political churn. Any more turmoil could be counter-productive.

Lam seems to have succeeded in getting all his ducks in a row to be elected to a full term in January 2026. So rather than see the relinquishing of the presidency as a sign of weakness, it’s more accurate to think of it as a sign of growing political strength.

Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College in Washington and an adjunct at Georgetown University. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Defense, the National War College, Georgetown University or Radio Free Asia.