Xi Jinping meeting may have accelerated general secretary's anti-graft drive
General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong speaks to the media in Hanoi on May 23, 2021. Like China's Xi Jinping, Trong has used an anti-graft drive to tighten his grip on power. © AP
HANOI --
Vietnam party chief Nguyen Phu Trong appears to have further cemented his grip
on power after parliament on Thursday approved the dismissals of two deputy
prime ministers in an extraordinary session that opened the same day.
The
decision was precipitated by the Vietnamese Communist Party last week stripping
the pair of their Central Committee positions.
Pham
Binh Minh was standing deputy prime minister in charge of overall diplomacy,
and Vu Duc Dam was the deputy prime minister in charge of public health. The
men are believed to have been replaced after being charged with allowing
corruption to fester under their watches.
Minh's
offense is said to be a lack of supervision when COVID-19 first ripped around
the world and flights were being arranged to bring home Vietnamese nationals
living abroad. About 40 people, including a deputy foreign minister, a former
ambassador to Japan and a travel agency executive, have been arrested for
allegedly taking bribes from passengers who were given boarding priority.
Dam
was singled out for his oversight of how the government conducted bidding for
coronavirus test kits. The process has since been revealed as being marred by
rigging, giving way to a scandal that has resulted in the expulsions and
arrests of a former health minister and a former mayor of Hanoi.
Neither
Minh nor Dam have been arrested, and no official explanations have been given
for their dismissals. A diplomatic source reacted with surprise when talking to
Nikkei Asia: "They had clean images within the party," the source
said, "and were popular among the people."
The
dismissals mark an escalation of the yearslong anti-corruption drive being
carried out by General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, who is in his third term as
party leader. It is the first time that Trong has gone after government
officeholders at the highest levels.
Experts
say the escalation shows Trong is further consolidating his grip on power,
though he has already "almost converged the actual power of the state, the
party, the armed forces, the judicial and supervisory systems," said Dang
Tam Chanh, a Ho Chi Minh-based political analyst.
State-owned
media in Vietnam calls the aggressive drive, with the so-called Central
Steering Committee on Anti-corruption at the helm, "a burning
furnace." Chanh regards it as "Mr. Trong's furnace."
While
he moves forward with his anticorruption drive, Trong is also on the lookout
for a successor.
Carlyle
Thayer, emeritus professor of politics at the University of New South Wales
Canberra at the Australian Defence Force Academy, said that Trong "failed
to get his protege Tran Quoc Vuong approved as the next party leader" at
the party's 13th National Congress in 2021, when he was given an unprecedented
third term in office.
"Trong
will quietly canvass members of the Politburo, secretariat and other senior
party officials about his successor," Thayer told Nikkei. "In the
meantime, Trong will continue with his 'burning furnace' campaign because he
knows that corruption in the party is the major threat to its legitimacy to
rule Vietnam."
There
has long been speculation that Trong, now 78, would be replaced in the middle
of his third term, which runs to 2026, if other party members with enough power
emerge.
But
Trong's hold on authority has since become unshakable, experts now say.
"There
is a large chance that Trong will stay in power until his health conditions do
not allow it," said Alex Vuving, a professor at the Daniel K. Inouye
Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. "Although he may
have created a lot of enemies, no other leader seems to be able to gather the
support of a majority of Central Committee members.
"In
this situation, Trong remains the default choice."
Party
insiders told Nikkei that ulterior motives might be behind Trong's anti-graft
drive.
Minh,
one of the two dismissed deputy prime ministers, is said to have harbored prime
ministerial or presidential ambitions, but Trong couldn't accept Minh's
"favor of Western-style and support from Western-style groups," one
insider told Nikkei.
"Trong
was also pressured by [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping to limit the influence of the
Western-favor faction, and Pham Binh Minh's name was directly mentioned,"
the source added. The phrase "Western favor" is believed to have been
part of the discussions when Trong visited Beijing in the fall and met Xi, who
used his own anti-graft drive to consolidate power in China.
When Trong returned from China,
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh went to the plane to welcome the general
secretary, according to Chanh, the Ho Chi Minh-based analyst. It is "a
ritual that has almost disappeared since Vietnam entered the economic
renovation era [in 1986]," the analyst added.
Despite
the dismissals of two deputy prime ministers, it is widely believed that Chinh
can survive Trong's anti-graft drive. "The dismissal of two deputy prime
ministers would temporarily bring difficulties to Prime Minister Pham Minh
Chinh," Ha Hoang Hop, a visiting senior fellow at Singapore's ISEAS-Yusof
Ishak Institute, told Nikkei, "but he should survive and continue his
post-COVID recovery tasks."
There
is also the possibility of Chinh coming under additional pressure. Chanh
believes the prime minister "cannot delay in reforming" Vietnam's
administrative system and civil service regime while also improving people's
wages -- all of which were mandates the dismissed Minh had been responsible
for.
Additional reporting by Kim Dung
Tong in Ho Chi Minh City and Yuji Kuronuma in Tokyo.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Vietnam-s-Trong-consolidates-power-with-dismissals-of-deputy-PMs
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