Vietnam's National Assembly elects new chairman amid political upheaval

Vietnam’s rubber stamp National Assembly voted in its new chairman on Monday, after the previous head stepped down after getting swept up in a corruption crackdown.

Tran Thanh Man, 61, is now one of the Southeast Asian country’s four most powerful leaders.

“It is a huge honour… I will devote myself to serving the people,” he told the assembly after the vote.

Thousands of people – including top officials and senior business leaders – have been caught up in Vietnam’s “blazing furnace” anti-graft campaign, led by Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.

Man, previously the assembly’s deputy chairman, succeeds Vuong Dinh Hue, who stepped down last month because of “violations and shortcomings”, according to the party.

He has not yet served a full term in the politburo, after joining in 2021, which is unusual for a top leader in Vietnam.

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According to Nguyen Khac Giang, visiting fellow at ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, that will mean he has “less authority to really assert his influence over the National Assembly”.

By comparison, his predecessor “was a very strong chairman… He confronted the government, he initiated many ideas and he forced the government to be accountable in some cases,” Giang told AFP.

The National Assembly elects its chair by secret ballot, before deputies vote whether to pass that result. Man carried all of the 475 votes.

The Communist Party on Saturday nominated public security minister To Lam to be the country’s new president after his predecessor also resigned.

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Vo Van Thuong stepped down in March after just one year in the job, and Lam will likely be confirmed as president on Wednesday.

The political upheaval is highly unusual in Vietnam, where for years all changes were carefully orchestrated with an emphasis on cautious stability.

On Thursday, another influential politburo member resigned. Truong Thi Mai was the permanent member of the secretariat in the central party committee – the most important position in Vietnamese politics outside its four-pillar leadership structure.

With the resignation of Mai, the once 18-strong politburo fell to 12 after also losing two presidents, the National Assembly chairman, a deputy prime minister and the head of the party’s economic commission in the past 18 months.

However, the party appointed four new members shortly afterwards, including Bui Thi Minh Hoai, who replaced Mai as the only woman in the politburo.