The head of Vietnam’s security, To Lam, was appointed this Wednesday by the National Assembly of Vietnam as the country’s new president. Lam thus succeeds Vo Van Thuong, who was forced to resign at the end of March of this year when he was involved in an anti-corruption campaign that shook both the political class and the country’s business elites, causing multiple changes at the top. of the government.
Following Lam’s confirmation as president, Deputy Public Security Minister Tran Quoc To has been appointed to replace him in the ministry on an interim basis.
The new president, who since 2016 has held the position of Minister of Popular Public Security, has supervised police and intelligence operations denounced by organizations such as Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International for systematically suppressing fundamental freedoms and violating international law.
“With To Lam becoming president, Vietnam has literally become a police state,” says Ben Swanton of the country’s free speech group, The 88 Project. And under Lam’s responsibility, the country imprisoned climate activists and introduced laws to censor social media.
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 succeed eventual Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, according to Nguyen Khac Giang. , an analyst at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. Phu Trong was elected for a third term in 2021, but at 80 years old he will not be able to run for another term after 2026.
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh is seen as the other major contender to succeed Trong, Giang said.
This unprecedented instability in the Vietnamese political system has spooked investors as the country tries to position itself as an alternative for companies looking to shift their supply chains away from China.
The 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 of 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, down from 8% in 2022, due to slowing exports.
Lam scandalized the country during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2021, when a video emerged showing the Turkish chef, popularly known as Salt Bae, feeding 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 compounded economic deprivation.
Meanwhile, a Vietnamese noodle seller named Bui Tuan Lam, who shared the video with a parody of Salt Bae, was arrested on charges of spreading anti-state propaganda and sentenced to five years in prison.
