Vietnam’s National Assembly (NA), the country’s supreme legislative body, will elect new state president on October 23 and the result of the vote will be announced on the same day, VnEconomy cited a legislator as saying.
General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam’s Nguyen Phuc Trong is the sole candidate for the president post.
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General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam’s Nguyen Phuc Trong was the sole nominee for the president post at the eighth plenum of the Party’s Central Committee that ended on October 6.
Over 90% of the nearly 500 NA deputies are members of the Party.
President Tran Dai Quang, a career police general, passed away on September 21 after a prolonged serious illness. His deputy, Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh, was appointed acting president several days later in compliance with the Constitution.
At a meeting with voters in Hanoi on October 8, Trong said that his nomination was a situational situation after President Quang’s passing and this would not be a merger of the general secretary and president offices.
According to observers, if the nomination is ratified, diplomatic protocols will no longer be a headache when Trong travels abroad.
A number of key issues will also be decided at the upcoming gathering.
A new minister of information and communications will be ratified on October 24 after Truong Minh Tuan, who is involved in the illegal acquisition of TV service provider AVG by mobile carrier MobiFone, is dismissed from this post. Nguyen Manh Hung, who headed military-run telco Viettel Group, is now in charge of this ministry.
A confidence vote will be conducted on October 24 on officials elected or ratified by the NA. The 16 Politburo members will undergo a similar vote in December.
The legislators will also examine and likely approve Vietnam’s participation in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), to which 11 countries are signatories after President Trump withdrew the US from the pact in January 2016.
Three member states – Mexico, Japan and Singapore -- have approved the deal and if Vietnam follows suit, only two other approvals are needed for the trade agreement to come into force.
