A Political Earthquake

Nguyễn Xuân Phúc and others resign

Good morning! A belated Happy (western) New Year, and Chúc Mừng Năm Mới to everyone celebrating Tet! A warm welcome to the many new readers who signed up over the holiday period. I had hoped there wouldn’t be such a long break between newsletters, but my US visit has been packed, and I only have time today for an off-schedule single-topic edition. Regular programming will resume soon.

That includes an upcoming subscriber-only feature, which can be accessed (along with all previous exclusive posts) for US$5/month or US$50/year.

On to the news.

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The Anti-Corruption Campaign Hits the Highest Levels of Government

I’ll start with the most significant story and work backward: the Central Party Committee has agreed to let President Nguyễn Xuân Phúc resign from all his positions, including from the Politburo, for “violations and wrongdoing” by officials under his control.

In other words, he was in charge when lower-level officials carried out the blockbuster repatriation flight and COVID-19 test kit scandals that have consumed the government over the last year.

The move will be approved during an extraordinary meeting of the National Assembly this week (right before the start of Tet, no less).

Reuters has more background on Phúc, who is widely admired and helped oversee impressive economic growth during his tenure as Prime Minister from 2016-2021. Ahead of the selection of new leadership in 2021, Phúc had been expected to continue rising up the ranks and was even mentioned as a possible General Secretary - instead, he was pushed aside to the fairly powerless presidential position.

Still, he stayed busy and was among the most international-focused of the top leadership - just last month, he was in Indonesia for an official visit, and during an event on Saturday, he lauded the contributions overseas Vietnamese have made to the national economy.

And even though the role of the president is largely ceremonial, it is still one of the Vietnamese government’s ‘four pillars,’ meaning Phúc is by far the highest-ranking official to lose their position due to the anti-corruption campaign.

Analysis of Phúc’s ouster is coming in fast, and I’ll share highlights in the next newsletter. As of now, I have no idea who his successor will be, though perhaps that will be more clear by the time you read this. There’s no overstating how big of a deal this is: at least one news outlet called it ‘extraordinary,’ and I saw one Vietnamese analyst call this the biggest political development in post-war Vietnam.

So how did we get here? With two other high-profile resignations.

In the first week of January, the Central Party Committee approved the resignations of two (out of four) deputy prime ministers: Phạm Bình Minh, in charge of diplomacy, and Vũ Đức Đam, in charge of public health.

These resignations were quickly approved by the National Assembly in another extraordinary meeting and set off shockwaves that finally reached Phúc.

Like Phúc, Minh and Đam were highly regarded and thought to be candidates for higher positions in the future: both were relatively young by CPV standards (63 for Minh, 59 for Dam), spoke multiple languages, had advanced degrees from western universities, and were publicly competent.

I was particularly impressed by Đam, who led the Steering Committee for Covid-19 Prevention and Control and always seemed level-headed and logical. (Obviously, the pandemic in Vietnam went horribly for a few months in 2021, but Đam and Phúc had both been largely sidelined by that point.)

But even if Minh and Đam didn’t personally commit any wrongdoing, their oversight of sectors responsible for two of the worst scandals in modern Vietnamese history meant they had to go - though their exits were more graceful than an arrest and future jail time.

Their replacements have since been named: Trần Hồng Hà, the Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, and Trần Lưu Quang, Secretary of the Party Committee of Hai Phong. Both are seen as significant downgrades from Minh and Đam, but time will tell.

I’ll be the first to say that I have no idea how any of this will work out: perhaps this house-cleaning (even of effective officials) will painfully start a new, less corrupt path; perhaps this will only exacerbate the policy malaise present at every government level; or maybe there are other ways forward. Whatever the case, divining the future of the Vietnamese government is wildly difficult at best. Let’s see where this goes.

Back next week with another newsletter.

Mike Tatarski