Vietnam’s newly elected President Lam KoRecently, a three-day visit to China was concluded. Mr Lam chose China for his first foreign trip after taking office, which is a sign that the new leadership has strengthened ties with its larger communist neighbour, with whom it fought a war in 1979.
Mr Lam and his wife were given a welcoming ceremony at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, including a 21-gun salute, the highest honours reserved for heads of state. Mr Lam, who succeeds longtime Communist Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong who dies in July 2024 at age 80, has moved quickly to consolidate power domestically and strengthen Vietnam’s partnerships abroad.
Mr Lam was born in 1957, the year the communist insurgency began in southern Vietnam. A Communist Party member since 1981, Mr Lam got his start in the police service. He studied at the People’s Security Academy and joined the security force in October 1974 and rose through the ranks, eventually becoming Minister of Public Security in April 2016, a position that made him one of the most powerful figures in the one-party dictatorship.
He has been a member of the 12th and 13th Politburo of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), which holds immense power in the country by directing government policies.
Steak controversy
Mr Lam has also been involved in controversies. In 2021, he was spotted eating a gold-plated steak at celebrity chef Nusret Gokce’s fine dining restaurant in London. Mr Lam was in London after attending the UN COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. The video went viral on TikTok at a time when Vietnam was struggling with economic complications following the COVID-19 pandemic. The video was quickly removed from TikTok, but not before it was viewed by millions of people.
A video posted on Mr Gokce’s TikTok account on Nov 3 showed the chef personally preparing steak dishes in front of the delegation, and even feeding a piece of meat to Mr Lam himself.
A noodle vendor in Vietnam who went viral for imitating Chef Gokce’s distinctive salting style has been sentenced to five years in prison for “anti-state propaganda” in 2023. The vendor posted a video of himself shortly after Mr Lam’s video went viral.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has also raised concerns about Mr Lam’s rise to power in Vietnam. According to the group, his “rise to power is a sign of the Vietnamese government’s increasing repression, its total intolerance of criticism, and its blatant hostility towards basic civil and political rights”. In 2016, when Mr Lam was Minister of Public Security, activists were reportedly prevented from meeting former US President Barack Obama during his historic visit to the country.
Vietnamese security forces led by Mr Lam were also accused of abducting former party official Trinh Xuan Thanh from Berlin in July 2017 and blogger Truong Duy Nhat from Bangkok in January 2019.
German authorities said Vietnamese businessman and former politician Thanh and his partner were abducted in downtown Berlin and dragged into a van, while Vietnam responded that he surrendered to Vietnamese authorities after evading an international arrest warrant for nearly a year. Mr Thanh was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2018.
Truong Duy Nhat was sentenced to 10 years in prison in March 2020 for “abusing his position and power” as a reporter, according to a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Mr Nhat worked for Radio Free Asia’s Vietnamese language service, which is funded by the US
According to HRW, Vietnamese courts convicted at least 32 people for posting critical opinions about the government and sentenced them to several years in prison in 2021, when Mr. Lam was head of the Ministry of Public Security. Mr. Lam will remain Vietnam’s president until 2026, when the party will elect new office holders at its next five-year congress.