Mr Dung still has an outside chance to land support for his drive to become party General Secretary, said Mr Nguyen Manh Hung, professor emeritus at George Mason University in Virginia, US.
Advertisement
The country’s top three positions – party general secretary, president and prime minister – are up for grabs at the weeklong meeting, which ends Thursday, January 28.
Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung (C) arrives for the opening ceremony of the 12th National Congress of Vietnam’s Communist Party (VCP) in Hanoi, Vietnam, January 21, 2016.
Some 1,500 delegates at the five-yearly Communist Party congress worked late into the night Monday in closed-door talks, finalizing a list of candidates from which the country’s new leadership will be chosen.
Analysts say Dung, a political heavyweight widely credited with pursuing a pro-business agenda, has always been at odds with party stalwarts wary of him entrenching his power and influence.
Though Vietnam posted one of Asia’s fastest growth rates past year at 6.7 percent and attracted record foreign investment, analysts say resentment has festered among the party’s old guard about crises in the banking sector and among state-owned firms during Dung’s premiership. The Central Committee, one of two pillars of the ruling establishment, will be chosen Tuesday.
Though the party’s strategy is to continue to strengthen the $186-billion exports and manufacturing economy, analysts and investors have said reform momentum could become uncertain under a new leadership.
Dung has built a reputation for promoting economic reforms, and being bold enough to confront China in its territorial aggression in the South China Sea.
Trong on the other hand is a stolid, conservative party apparatchik who is not seen as being too imaginative on economic reforms, and being too soft on China.
“Ideologically, there isn’t a yawning gap between Trong and Dung, although most people believe that the pace of economic reform might slow a bit if Trong remains at the helm and Dung is ousted”, said Murray Hiebert, a Southeast Asian expert based in Washington, DC.
The Jan. 20-28 congress, a key political event in Vietnam, has started internal elections for key committees and posts and the party’s top leadership is to be decided this week. After that, they will elect at least 16 members to the all-powerful Politburo, which handles the day to day governance of Vietnam. If they do so on Monday, Dung would be in the running for the general secretary’s post along with Trong. Trong’s camp accuses him of economic mismanagement, a prime example of which was the bankruptcy of a state-owned shipping company, failing to control massive public debt, corruption and non-preforming loans of state-owned banks.
Advertisement
Vietnam is one of the last remaining communist nations in the world, with a party membership of 4.5 million out of its 93 million people.
