Vietnam's National Assembly, the country's supreme legislative body, has elected Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, the new President with a majority of vote at its plenum on October 23.
Newly-elected State President Nguyen Phu Trong takes the oath of office. Source: Zing.
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In early October, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam proposed Trong as the sole candidate for the state president position with absolute majority.
The nomination of the 74-year-old party leader as state president came after the death of president Tran Dai Quang last month. Quang passed away on September 21 at the age of 61 due to a "serious illness". Vice President Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh was appointed to Acting President, becoming the first female head of state in Vietnam.
Trong, born 1944 in Hanoi, studied Literature in university and spent many years working for the Communist Review, the political agency of Vietnam's Communist Party, and was its editor in chief between 1991 and 1996.
He served as Hanoi's Party Secretary between 2000 and 2006, before chairing Vietnam's National Assembly for two consecutive terms.
He became a standing member of the Politburo, the Party's decision-making body, in 1999. In 2011, he became the General Secretary of the Party's Central Committee, and was reelected to the position in 2016.
