Vietnam unanimously elected Communist Party General Secretary To Lam as president for a five-year term, consolidating his control over both the party and the state.
The move departs from Vietnam’s tradition of shared leadership, in which the jobs have typically been held by different people, and echoes power structures in China under Xi Jinping and neighboring Laos.
It has been widely expected since Lam’s reelection as Communist Party head in January, when observers noted that his consolidation of party authority positioned him to assume the presidency as well.
Normally the general secretary of the communist party, the president of the state, and the prime minister of the national assembly are different people. To Lam has been general secretary for a while, while others were president and PM. It gives a separation of state and party. Now, To Lam is General Secretary AND president, the first time those two posts have been held by the same person.
It’s not that bad of a development, the Communist party of Vietnam is nothing like the totalitarian CCP. The Vietnamese still fuck people off when they are corrupt or inept. To Lam has beef doing a pretty good job of keeping Vietnam stable, peaceful, and developing at a sustainable pace. There’s still lots of poverty, inequality and inflation, but it takes time to recover from decades of war with various other countries and keep up with modernization. It’s a nice, peaceful country.