The general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Nguyen Phu Trong, the Vietnamese political leader who has amassed the most power in recent decades, died this Friday (19) of natural causes, according to the Hanoi government.
For months there has been speculation about the fragile health of Trong, 80, who yesterday took temporary leave from his post to receive medical treatment for an unspecified illness.
The Vietnamese politician died of old age and a serious illness, the ruling Communist Party said in a statement.
According to the note, the Vietnamese leader died at 1:38 pm (local time, 3:38 am in Brasilia), at the Central Military Hospital in Hanoi.
Trong took office in 2011 and was re-elected in 2016 and in January 2021 for a third five-year term, an unprecedented event in Vietnam’s modern history that made him the most powerful leader in decades in the Asian country.
The Vietnamese leader’s death comes a day after the Communist Party announced that Trong would step down temporarily and that his position would be filled on an interim basis by To Lam, his most likely successor.
Born in 1944 in Hanoi, Trong is often described as the last guardian of Marxist essences at the top of the party, which he joined in 1967, amid the war between the communist North and the US-backed South.
His terms in office were marked by a fierce fight against corruption in the Communist Party – which in recent years has involved high-ranking officials in the country -, in the army and in the police, although many analysts have accused him of using these measures to purge his opponents.
A graduate in Philology and trained for two years in the Soviet Union, he began his political rise as a columnist for the official magazine of the Communist Party, between 1991 and 1996, before joining the Politburo (management body) in 1999, with the title of great theoretician of Marxism in Vietnam.
From then on, his marked intellectual facet lost weight in the face of his political rise: top leader of the Party in Hanoi between 2000 and 2006, president of the National Assembly from 2006 to 2011 and general secretary of the Party from that year onwards.
During his career, Trong witnessed the country’s opening to international trade and investment, and the recovery of relations with Washington (he himself traveled to the White House during Barack Obama’s term), but he never completely abandoned his Marxist ideology, visible in his calls for “morality” in the Party, in his censure of the ostentatious behavior of its leaders and in his closeness to Beijing.
The Vietnamese supreme leader’s administration is also marked by persecution of journalists who denounce irregularities during the dictatorship.
A recent example of this was the arrest of Truong Huy San, known by the name Huy Duc, one of the journalists most critical of the communist regime in the Asian country.
Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security confirmed the arrest of Duc last month and lawyer Tran Dinh Trien under Article 331 of the Vietnamese Penal Code, which is related to “abusing” “democratic freedoms to infringe on the interests of the state.” The journalist could face up to seven years in prison.
#Vietnams #Supreme #Leader #Nguyen #Phu #Trong #Dies