Vietnam's communist party meets to elect leaders for the next five years
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Version 0 of 1. Vietnam’s Communist Party has opened an eight-day congress to name a set of leaders who will govern the country for the next five years. The meeting, which happens once every five years in the one-party state, brings together 1,510 delegates from around the country. Behind closed doors, they will review policies and performance and select a prime minister, president, national assembly chairman and party general secretary, who will be the country’s de facto leader. The congress is closed to the media but the 71-year-old incumbent party chief, Nguyen Phu Trong, is expected to be reinstalled, turning back a challenge from the 66-year-old prime minister, Nguyen Tan Dung, who it is thought will retire. A status quo will put a question mark over Vietnam’s relationship with China, its biggest trading partner and regional rival. Beijing has been expanding its territorial assertions in the South China Sea, but Vietnam has pushed back against those claims. Dung has been seen as standing up to Beijing, not afraid to criticise it, while Trong was seen as being soft on China. Analysts say there won’t be a sea change in policy, either in foreign relations or economic affairs. “Trong has been less strident in his criticisms of Chinese behavior, but no one expects him to cozy up to Beijing in the face of tensions in the South China Sea,” said Murray Hiebert, a Southeast Asian expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Despite their differing styles, Hiebert said both men recognize that the party’s survival “depends on continuing economic reform and global economic diversification.” Experts also believe that regardless of who takes the top spot, Vietnam’s ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade initiative and pace of improving ties with the America will continue. |