On September 6, 2018, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Nguyen Phu Trong met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi, Russia.
Mikhail Svetlov | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party, died on Friday after 13 years in the country’s most powerful post. He is 80 years old.
He died early in the afternoon “due to old age and serious illness,” the Communist Party said in a statement on its website, without further elaborating on the nature of the illness.
The statement quoted information from Nguyen Phu Trong’s medical team, saying that he “passed away after a period of illness despite receiving wholehearted treatment from the party, the state, professors, doctors and top medical experts.”
President To Lam replaced Nguyen Phu Trong on Thursday when the party announced the aging leader needed to focus on health care.
The party needs to decide whether Carrie Lam will continue as acting party general secretary until her term expires after the next national congress in 2026, or whether to elect a new candidate from within the party before then.
Although Vietnam officially does not have a supreme ruler, Nguyen Phu Trong has served as general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam since 2011 and is the most powerful figure in the country.
He was re-elected for a third term in 2021 after abandoning the two-term rule for party chairman, demonstrating his strength and outsized political influence in a party that has ruled Vietnam for nearly half a century.
But in recent months, he has appeared vulnerable at public events and missed several high-level meetings.
Nguyen Phu Trong was educated in the Soviet Union and was regarded as a Marxist-Leninist thinker. In 2017, he launched what many saw as a Chinese-style anti-corruption campaign known as the “Crucible” that saw hundreds of officials investigated for corruption and many forced to resign, including cabinet ministers and a the President of Parliament and two State Presidents.
Lam, the former head of the powerful internal security agency, has been a key figure in the campaign and was elected president in May after her predecessor resigned amid unspecified allegations of misconduct.
