In the coming days, some 1,600 delegates from the Communist Party will approve policy documents for the next five years and elect a new Central Committee of roughly 200 members.
The Party’s new top leadership is then chosen through a tightly controlled process.
Of the 200 elected Central Committee members, 17 to 19 members of the Politburo – the Communist Party’s top decision-making body – will be chosen, including the general secretary.
All candidates are chosen in advance by the Communist Party with no electoral competition, which is why approvals are typically near-unanimous. The Vietnamese public has no direct role in selecting its national leaders.
The new top leadership will be revealed on the final day of the congress, 25 January, and the general secretary will deliver the closing speech.
To Lam was elected general secretary by the Central Committee on August 3, 2024, replacing his predecessor Nguyen Phu Trong who passed away in July 2024.
He currently heads the Central Committee, the Politburo and the Secretariat, oversees the armed forces as Secretary of the Central Military Commission and chairs the party’s anti-corruption body. Under the Constitution, the General Secretary leads both the Party and the state.
To Lam, an ex-police officer in the secretive public security ministry, has modelled himself as an aspirational reformer, pegging his flag to the promise of sharp economic growth and declaring an “era of national rise” for Vietnam.
He has an ambitious plan to build Vietnam into an upper-income, knowledge-and-tech-based economy by the year 2045.
Since taking office, he has driven policies on administrative reform, national development, and private-sector growth. He has also centralised power and expanded the authority of the police ministry which he once headed.
