BANGKOK– Vietnam’s top security official, To Lam, was confirmed Wednesday as the nation’s new president. He oversaw police and intelligence operations during a period in which human rights groups say basic freedoms have been systematically suppressed and his secret service was accused of violating international law.
Lam was confirmed by Vietnam’s National Assembly after his predecessor resigned amid an ongoing anti-corruption campaign that has shaken the country’s political establishment and business elites and resulted in multiple high-level changes in the government.
Vietnam’s presidency is largely ceremonial, but his new role as head of state puts the 66-year-old in a “very strong position” to become the next general secretary of the Communist Party, the country’s most important political position. said Nguyen Khac Giang. , an analyst at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.
The general secretary of the Communist Party, Nguyen Phu Trong, was elected for a third term in 2021, but at 80 years old he cannot run for another term after 2026.
Trong is an ideologue who sees corruption as the most serious threat facing the party. As Vietnam’s top security official, Lam has led Trong’s sweeping anti-corruption campaign.
Following Lam’s confirmation as president, Deputy Public Security Minister Tran Quoc To was appointed to replace him in the ministry on an interim basis.
Lam spent more than four decades in the Ministry of Public Security before becoming minister in 2016. His promotion came as Vietnam’s politburo lost six of its 18 members amid the growing anti-corruption campaign, including two former presidents and the parliamentary head of Vietnam.
Lam was behind many of the investigations into high-profile politicians, Giang said.
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh is seen as the other major contender to succeed Trong, Giang said.
The current deputy speaker of Vietnam’s parliament was confirmed on Monday as speaker of the National Assembly after his predecessor, Vuong Dinh Hue, resigned amid the anti-corruption campaign. Until his resignation, Hue was also seen as a potential successor to Trong.
This unprecedented instability in Vietnam’s political system has spooked investors as the country tries to position itself as an alternative for companies looking to move their supply chains out of China.
A flood of foreign investment, especially in the manufacturing of high-tech products such as smartphones and computers, raised expectations that it could join the “Four Asian Tigers”: Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, whose economies experienced rapid industrialization and recorded high growth. rates.
But scandals and uncertainty (including the death sentence for a real estate tycoon accused of embezzling almost 3% of the country’s GDP in 2022) have brought uncertainty and bureaucratic reluctance to decision-making. Economic growth fell to 5.1% last year from 8% in 2022 as exports slowed.
During Lam’s years as head of the Ministry of Public Security, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other watchdog organizations have harshly criticized Vietnam for its harassment and intimidation of its critics.
In 2021, courts convicted at least 32 people for publishing opinions critical of the government and sentenced them to several years in prison, while police arrested at least 26 other people on trumped-up charges, according to Human Rights Watch.
Under Tam as Vietnam’s top security chief, civil society faced new restrictions, restrictions on foreign aid introduced in 2021 were tightened in 2023, the country jailed climate activists and laws were introduced to censor social media, said Ben Swanton of The 88 Project, a group that advocates for free speech in Vietnam.
“With To Lam’s rise to the presidency, Vietnam is now literally a police state,” Swanton said, adding that the Vietnamese ruling Politburo was now dominated by current and former security officials. He said that he expected a further intensification of repression and censorship.
While Vietnam was under COVID-19 lockdown in 2021, a video surfaced showing Turkish chef Nusret Gokce, popularly known as Salt Bae, giving Tam a gold-encrusted steak in London. Despite efforts to censor it, the video went viral, stoking widespread anger among people enduring virus lockdowns that exacerbated economic deprivation.
Meanwhile, a Vietnamese noodle vendor named Bui Tuan Lam, who followed the video with a Salt Bae parody, was arrested on charges of spreading anti-state propaganda and sentenced to five years in prison.
It was also during Lam’s tenure as Public Security Minister, in 2017, that German authorities say Vietnamese businessman and former politician Trinh Xuan Thanh and a companion were kidnapped and dragged into a van in central Berlin, in what officials called it “a blatant and unprecedented attack.” violation of German and international law.”
Vietnam has maintained that Thanh surrendered to Vietnamese authorities after evading an international arrest warrant for nearly a year. Germany said he and his partner were kidnapped and responded by summoning the Vietnamese ambassador for talks and expelling his intelligence attaché.
Thanh was sentenced to life in prison in 2018 after being tried in Vietnam.
Announcing espionage-related charges in 2022 against a man accused of being part of the Thanh kidnapping, the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office said the kidnapping was a “Vietnamese secret service operation” also carried out by Vietnamese agents and members of their embassy in Berlin. like several Vietnamese nationals living in Europe.
The suspect, identified only as Ahn TL under German privacy laws, was found guilty in 2023 of complicity in a kidnapping as a foreign agent and sentenced to five years in prison.
“Relations between Germany and Vietnam continue to be shaken by this crime to this day,” the German court stated at the time.
Another suspect, identified as Long NH, was convicted in 2018 in a Berlin court on espionage-related charges and sentenced to nearly four years in prison.
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