Friday, 29 January 2016
Analysis: Successful Leader in Vietnam Needs to Be Faceless
- By vijay joshi, associated press
Vietnam's latest political turnover made one thing abundantly clear: being a strong, charismatic leader with a high domestic and international profile will only lead to your downfall. To be successful in Vietnamese politics, you have to work with consensus — and be, for the most part, faceless.
Vietnam's Communist Party ended a weeklong congress on Wednesday sticking with the status quo by re-electing Nguyen Phu Trong as party general secretary, the country's No. 1 leader, for a second five-year term. A contender, reform-minded Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, was cut to size and ousted from the collective leadership because he was seen by party bosses to have become too big for his boots.
Collective leadership is key to understanding how Vietnam's one-party Communist system works.