Vietnam's Aging Troika

[Tuan V Nguyen <t.nguyen@garvan.unsw.edu.au>]

Hello folks,

	The following article is published in the Sydney Morning 
Herald today (3rd April 97) re views of a journalist on the ageing 
of leadership in Vietnam. The commentary was written by David 
Jenskins, an Asian watcher for the newspaper. Jenkins is a 
relatively young lad and has track record in Asian affairs 
reporting. I have previously personally clashed with him (and 
others) publicly in this newspaper on issues related to VN.

	The article has been edited slighly to be suitable for 
posting in VNSA.

	Tuan

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                        Excerpt from 
                 Vietnam's Aging Troika

                     by David Jenkins
               Sydney Morning Herald 3 April 97


	More than half of Vietnam's 75million people are under the 
age of  21, which means they were born after the so-called 
"American war"  ended in 1975.  By way of contrast, the Big Three 
in the Politburo  have been around since they joined the anti-
French struggle in the  1930s. Do Muoi, the General Secretary of 
the party, is a 80-year-old who left school at 14 to repair and  
repaint doors along the narrow, tree-lined road from Hanoi to  
Haiphong.
 
	An apparatchik who had responsibility for Hanoi's  attempt 
to bring about the "socialist transformation"  of trade and 
industry in the South in the mid-1970s, Do Muoi is  now identified 
with the policy of doi moi, or renovation, under  which the 
Communist Party is busily discarding the fundamental  tenets of 
communism and pinning its hopes for survival on a sort  of 
Clayton's capitalism.
 
	The number two man in the party, President Le Duc Anh, 76, a  
general who commanded the Vietnamese army in Cambodia and who  
represents the powerful military constituency, which is threatened  
by the liberalising economic reforms, has been sidelined by a  
stroke since November and is not expected to resume his official  
duties.
 
	Number three in the pecking order is Prime Minister Vo Van 
Kiet, 75, a respected economic reformer who has been a party 
member  since 1938 and who is reportedly keen to step down - but 
only if  Do Muoi goes too.
 
	The problem for Vietnam is that it is not easy to find 
suitable  replacements for these men.
 
	The ruling troika, be it never so grey and uninspiring, 
preserves  a deft balance between the nation's three key regions 
(North,  Centre and South), its two main ideological groupings 
(economic  reformers and conservatives) and its two dominant 
institutions  (party and army). Do Muoi is a party bureaucrat from 
the north,  Anh a conservative army officer from the centre, Kiet 
a reform- minded civilian from the south.
 
	Although it was widely believed that all three would step 
down  during the 8th Party Congress last June, that did not 
happen. From  all accounts, it proved too difficult to cobble 
together a new  team which maintained the necessary balance. But 
change cannot be  too long delayed and may come soon after the new 
National Assembly  is elected in July.
 
	The man widely tipped as the next General Secretary of the 
party  is Lieutenant General Le Kha Phieu, 66, one of five key 
members of  the Politburo and Director of the General Political 
Department of  the Army.
 
	A former divisional political commissar who is as closely  
identified with the party as he is with the army, Phieu has  
impeccable class credentials, having emerged from a "pure peasant"  
background.
 
	His military credentials are less immediately apparent. In 
an  army which boasts any number of competent senior officers, 
Phieu  has no special claim to fame. Nevertheless, he has had a 
meteoric  rise through the ranks, having been plucked from 
obscurity in 1986  and having achieved a place on the party 
secretariat only five  years later.
 
 	Phieu, who is storming the countryside, always in the 
newspapers,  always on television, poking his nose into a wide 
range of policy  issues, appears to be every inch the hardliner, 
deeply concerned  about internal security and stability.
 
	Brusque to the point of rudeness and immensely ambitious, he 
has  made many enemies. According to some analysts, he has now 
wrecked  any chances he may have had of securing the top position 
in the  party. Others believe he is powerful enough for his 
unpopularity  not to matter.
 
	If Phieu were to stumble in his bid to become General 
Secretary,  National Assembly chairman Nong Duc Manh, 57, could 
emerge as a  compromise candidate. Unlike the others on the 19-
member  Politburo, Manh is a member of an ethnic minority, which 
would not  necessarily improve his prospects. On the other hand, a 
rumour  continues to circulate that he is the illegitimate son of 
Ho Chi  Minh, which does him no harm.
 
	In an attempt to get to the bottom of these stories, 
Australia's  Ambassador in Hanoi, Sue Boyd, who is nothing if not 
direct and  who keeps a life-sized bust of Ho Chi Minh on her 
embassy desk,  once asked Manh if he was indeed Uncle Ho's son. 
The answer was  noncommittal.
 
	Who will replace the ailing Anh as President?  At this 
stage, the frontrunner seems to be Foreign Minister  Nguyen Manh 
Cam,  68, a man of bland self-assurance who started  out as a 
Russian-language interpreter  and who went on to become  Hanoi's 
ambassador in Moscow, a key post at a time  when the  Soviet Union 
was Vietnam's principal international backer and   paymaster.
 
	Cam has a demonstrated competence in international affairs - 
he  is given the credit  for recent diplomatic achievements, 
including  normalisation of relations with Washington and 
Vietnam's  membership of ASEAN - and useful linguistic gifts,  
having added  French and English to his repertoire.   This could 
serve him well given that Vietnam is not only opening  up to the 
world  but about to host a major gathering of Francophone 
countries.  That said, most analysts believe Cam would be a fairly 
weak  figurehead President, not a force in  his own right, like 
Anh.   One of the others whose name has been mentioned as 
President is  the elderly  Defence Minister, General Doan Khue. 
The son of a  wealthy district chief from Central Vietnam, Doan, 
74, is a  hardliner who, like Phieu, made his name as a political 
officer,  not a fighting general. With his army background, he 
wouldn't have  much chance unless Phieu were to self-destruct on 
his way to the  general secretaryship.
 
	A third name on "possible presidents" list is that of Nong 
Duc  Manh. What about the prime ministership, the third of the 
three  key jobs? It seems logical and appropriate that Kiet's 
successor  as Prime Minister should be a Southerner with an 
economic and  reformist bent. There are several suitable 
candidates.
 
	The first and most obvious is Deputy Prime Minister Phan Van  
Khai, 64. Khai looked a shoo-in for the position a year ago but  
took a bit of a pasting when his son ran into what were  
euphemistically described as "business difficulties". The fact  
that Khai has managed to hold on to his job as Deputy Prime  
Minister suggests that he has weathered those storms.
 
	Another possible candidate is Deputy Interior Minister 
Nguyen Tan  Dung, 48, who last year emerged from relative 
obscurity to become  the fifth man on the Standing Board of the 
Politburo. A Southerner  who built his career in the party, Dung 
appears to have close  links to Kiet, which many see as reassuring 
given that the other  three members of the standing board are 
hard-liners.
 
	Of late, Dung has been making a lot of speeches about  
"equitisation", the Vietnamese code word for privatisation. A few  
days after one such speech, in an illustration that the internal  
battles go on, Do Muoi went out of his way to stress the  
importance of the State sector, thus emphasising the central,  
rather depressing theme of last year's party congress.
 
	A third man who has been mentioned as a possible replacement 
for  Kiet is Truong Tan Sang, also 48, the party boss in Ho Chi 
Minh  City, still the fly wheel that drives the economy.
 
	A man of force and vision who has been responsible for much 
of  the progress in the South, Sang has been a member of the 
Politburo  since last year. But he has not spent any time in the 
North and  has been telling colleagues he is happy where he is. 
Besides, in a  nation which retains an almost Confucian reverence 
for age, he,  like Dung, is likely to be considered too young and 
too  inexperienced for such a post.
 
	Given the country's continuing obsession with getting the  
factional balance right, it would be wrong to expect any sudden  
shifts in Vietnamese policy. Hanoi's new leaders - whoever they  
may be - will continue to dump the leaden ballast of Marxist dogma  
over the side of the gondola, albeit in fits and starts. As they  
do, the economic balloon will continue to rise.