Vietnam’s To Lam Consolidates Power and Boosts Growth

Welcome to Foreign policySoutheast Asia Brief.

This week’s highlights: Communist Party of Vietnam He reappoints its Secretary GeneralMyanmar’s military junta Declares victory in its false electionsIndonesia and Vietnam Join the Trump Peace CouncilScientists have proven The oldest cave art in the world Located in Indonesia.

Tu Lam was reappointed on Friday as Secretary-General of the Vietnamese Communist Party, the highest political position in the country.

The party congress ran from January 19 to 23. It has not yet been announced who will become president, as is the usual schedule. However, many expect Lam to also be appointed to the role.

This development would further concentrate power in Lam’s hands and end the system of collective leadership that has characterized Vietnam’s political system for decades.

Since taking office as secretary-general for the first time in 2024, Lam has moved quickly to boost growth and consolidate his grip on power. He has announced that he wants Vietnam to grow by 10 percent or more until 2030.

To this end, he consolidated the private sector and fired tens of thousands of civil servants.

The analysts I spoke to saw the conference as a success for Lam. “The main takeaway is that Tu Lam has been given a very strong mandate to accelerate his reforms,” said Nguyen Khac Giang, a researcher on Vietnamese politics at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.

Jiang noted how the conference was shortened to a day and a half, a sign of strong internal consensus. He added that if Lam became president – which will happen next month in a special session of the National Assembly or in late March when the new National Assembly convenes – this would further assert his authority.

The question now is what will Lam’s strength herald?

Hai Hong Nguyen, a senior lecturer in politics at Vienne University, takes an optimistic view of the consolidation of power. “I think it will allow for faster decision-making and more consistent implementation,” he said. Foreign policy.

However, there are other things that are crucial. “We are entering the era of ‘digital digital security,’” said Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, also known as “Mother Mushroom,” a prominent Vietnamese dissident and founder of the human rights advocacy group WEHEAR. Lam’s background is in security and surveillance. “We will see a robust deployment of technology not to empower citizens but to monitor them.”

Much may depend on the ambiguous internal politics of the Communist Party itself. Lam’s rise has been supported by the increasingly influential Ministry of Public Security, where the former police officer built his career.

However, as he reaches the political summit, Lam will need to expand his base to achieve his goals.

Jiang pointed out that the appointments made at the conference demonstrated the continued rehabilitation of the commercially oriented “southern faction.” This wing had previously been battered by the wide-ranging corruption investigations that Lam oversaw when she was public security minister.

The role of the army will also be important. The Vietnamese military is a powerful economic player, controlling major state-owned enterprises, and is seen as conservative in its actions.

One analyst predicted that while Lam will become more tolerant of other factions in the next five years, he does not want anything to get in the way of his focus on growth.

Some believe that concentration of power may undermine Lam’s economic goals.

“We are witnessing a transformation where the Ministry of Public Security has become not just a regulator, but an active player in the economy,” Nhu Quynh said. Ultimately, I predicted, this would undermine growth by distorting the economy and suppressing dynamism in favor of incumbents.

Myanmar’s military junta declares victory. Myanmar completed the third and final phase of its general elections on January 25. The results – to no one’s surprise – resulted in an overwhelming majority for the military establishment’s agent, the Union Solidarity and Development Party.

The results reflect the coordinated nature of the elections, as dozens of parties were prevented from running in the elections. Key members of the opposition, such as State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, remain imprisoned and have no contact with the outside world; Critics were mercilessly prosecuted, all while civil war raged across the country.

So, does Levant mean anything? “The election shows the military realizes it needs to go back behind the scenes and demonstrate civilian rule,” said Anthony Davis, a security analyst at Jane’s. “However, in terms of the practical aspect – what difference this might make to their legitimacy and what they can do for the economy – I would say very little,” he added.

Kyaw Swe Win of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners agrees, saying that the elections “will not change anything in Burma. The revolution will continue, and the conflicts will remain.”

Although Western democracies and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have not accepted the vote as legitimate, the fig leaf that the election may produce can still provide cover for some governments to seek greater participation.

Thailand may be interested in this, depending on the results of the general elections on February 8. Thai Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangkitkiew had previously said that although he was skeptical about Thailand’s recognition of the elections to be held this year in Myanmar, the “incomplete” vote held in 2010 still helped pave the way for a period of reform and democratic transition.

On the other hand, Myanmar’s ambassador to the United Nations remains loyal to the ousted civilian government. The country’s seat on the Human Rights Council remains empty. Myanmar – and its allies such as Russia and China – could use the elections as leverage to appoint representatives approved by the junta.

There may be an impact on the battlefield. The junta, after coming close to collapse in late 2024, has begun to stage a partial comeback. These developments, in addition to the elections, “stimulated a sense of crisis among the opposition,” Davis said. Foreign policy.

This concern has helped unite the Spring Revolution Coalition, a group of about 20 rebel groups and ethnic armed organizations that have pledged to cooperate against the junta.

However, it remains to be seen whether this agreement will continue, or whether the military will be able to deploy its old tactics of divide and rule and cut deals with various groups.

Indonesia and Vietnam join Trump’s peace council. Indonesia and Vietnam have agreed to join the peace council established by US President Donald Trump.

The decision taken by the former president reflects President Prabowo Subianto’s long-standing desire to bring Indonesia into the Gaza conflict, after previously offering the participation of Indonesian forces in peacekeeping forces.

The move sparked controversy domestically, with many in the staunchly pro-Palestinian Indonesian political and political elite questioning Trump’s plans.

As for Vietnam, analysts spoke to Foreign policy He noted that the decision was unusually quick and occurred despite great Vietnamese sympathy for the Palestinians, and attributed this to the government’s desire to remain by Trump’s side.

Singapore and Thailand were also invited to the conference, but decided to postpone joining the conference for the time being. The former says she is “evaluating” the offer but has previously expressed doubts about the concept.

The Thai government says it cannot make a decision before the February 8 elections. Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said joining could bring benefits but raised concerns about the $1 billion cost of permanent membership.

Meanwhile, a statement was issued by the leader of the main opposition party Foreign policy He emphasized the need for Thailand’s “strategic independence.”

Conviction of a Filipino journalist Journalist Frenchie Mai Cumpeau and religious activist Marielle Domkel were sentenced to 12 to 18 years in prison in a regional court on January 22.

The two were convicted of financing terrorism, and the court dropped two separate weapons possession charges.

Many have condemned the case as relying on planted evidence and testimonies of unreliable witnesses. It is worth noting that last October, another court rejected a civil forfeiture case related to terrorist financing charges, saying that there was no evidence of a crime.

He described the investigation conducted by Reporters Without Borders into the case as “fabricated.”

The case is widely seen as an example of “red-tagging” – where government critics are vilified and prosecuted based on alleged links to the long-running communist insurgency in the Philippines.

These handprints, designed to give the impression of claw tips, are 67,800 years old and are the oldest known example of cave art in the world. The remarkable drawings were discovered in a cave on the island of Sulawesi and chronicled by a joint Australian-Indonesian team.

The handprints—at least 15,000 years older than any other cave art found in the area—provide a glimpse not only of early human culture but also of migration.

Discussions about how humans arrived on Sahol, an ancient continent that included Australia and New Guinea, have long hinged on whether humans traveled south through Java and the Sunda Islands to reach northern Australia or north through Borneo and Sulawesi to reach New Guinea. This discovery adds weight to the northern route hypothesis.

Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. is facing three separate impeachment attempts. Cliff Harvey Venzon provides a good summary of the film’s tangled political drama Bloomberg.

Why is Indonesia planning to nearly triple the size of its armed forces? Muhammad Fuzan Maluviti deconstructs Jakarta’s plans to build a 1.2 million-strong army, and the fragile logic behind it, in War on rocks.

Documents extracted from a Cambodian fraud complex reveal in startling detail the ways criminal groups profile and prey on their victims, Solki Lee reported. A world.

16,985. The record decline recorded by the Indonesian rupiah against the US dollar during intraday trading on January 20. The decline was driven by news that Prabowo had nominated his nephew to become deputy governor of Bank Indonesia, the country’s central bank.

The rupee has fallen steadily for a year now, driven by the exit of foreign investors over concerns about the quality of governance and the central bank’s unusually pessimistic stance as the president pursues growth.

The presidential appointment of someone close to the central bank is likely to intensify these trends.