POSTMODERN STALINISM
Arrests of aides highlight pre-party congress maneuvering in Vietnam
2022.12.04
Vietnam's Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong [center] walks with Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh [right] and National Assembly Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue [left] as they attend the opening of the National Assembly's autumn session in Hanoi , Oct. 20, 2022.
On Nov. 28, Vietnamese police arrested Nguyen Van Trinh, the chief-of-staff to the country’s Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam. He was the second chief of staff to a deputy prime minister who has been arrested in the past few months.
The arrests were ostensibly for corruption, both involving scandals during the Covid-19 Pandemic, but in a country like Vietnam where corruption is rife, and investigative/prosecutorial resources are so limited, all such cases are highly political. These arrests shed light on how elite politics are played and how they will shape the leadership moving forward.
In 2020, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam was a national hero, in charge of Vietnam’s stellar covid-19 response. Vietnam had mobilized society, called on combatting the virus as a patriotic struggle, sealed its borders, enforced quarantines, and superb and consistent public health messaging.
Dam was in charge of the nationwide response. And many were surprised when, at the 13th Party Congress, the quinquennial leadership turnover in January 2021, he was not elevated from the Central Committee to the 19-member Politburo. Many recall the crushed Dam, caught on film leaving the Congress. And for many Vietnamese that a competent technocrat, who helped the country have the only positive economic growth in Southeast Asia in 2020, was passed over in favor of political hacks, was disheartening.
Things quickly went south for the new government that came to power in early 2021. Vietnam’s low covid numbers made it complacent about vaccine acquisition, and the country was hard hit by the Delta and Omicron variants, prompting Ho Chi Minh City and other Mekong delta cities to go into lockdown. Vietnam ended its own “Zero Covid” strategy.
At this time, Viet A, a medical testing firm won a license to produce inferior covid test kits, which it sold to all levels of the government at a 45 percent markup, wracking in $172 million in profits.
Viet A’s CEO admitted to paying over $34 million in bribes. The investigations brought down 90 people, including two Central Committee members, one a former Minister of Health, the other a former Hanoi mayor. Two senior military officials were also prosecuted. Over a hundred have been investigated.
Dam’s chief-of-staff was accused of helping Viet A register and receive government contracts. 
Vietnam’s Deputy Foreign Minister To Anh Dung [left] and Nguyen Quang Linh, the assistant to Pham Binh Minh, now Deputy Prime Minister, were arrested this year in connection with the scandal-ridden endeavor to repatriate Vietnamese nationals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: Police [left]; Ministry of Public Security
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was in charge of organizing repatriation flights for Vietnamese nationals during the pandemic, which became a completely scandal-laden endeavor. 70,000 citizens returned from 60 countries in this program.
In all some 22 diplomats have been investigated with several arrests. Others, including the owner of a travel agency that was used in the scheme, have also been arrested. The highest-ranking official, Deputy Foreign Minister To Anh Dung, was arrested in April 2022, expelled from the party, and prosecuted.
On 27 September, authorities arrested Nguyen Quang Linh, the assistant to Pham Binh Minh, now Deputy Prime Minister, but formally the minister of Foreign Affairs, on whose watch the scandal unfolded.
Minh is a member of the elite 18-member Politburo. And due to party rules, he’s one of six people eligible to become the Party’s General Secretary, however unlikely. Minh was also tipped to become president, a largely ceremonial and diplomatic role.
In the 12th Central Committee, two Politburo members were sacked, one of whom was stripped of his party membership and put on trial. So there is a precedent to go after senior leaders. As mentioned above, two Central Committee members were stripped of their membership and prosecuted in 2022.
But what do these arrests say about the nature of Vietnamese politics?
First, Vietnamese politics are based on patron-client ties.
If individuals like Minh and Dam are too senior or if going after them would cause too much intra-party dissension, targeting their top aides is a very effective tool. Given the routine use of torture by the police, which can result in in-custody death, the aides will talk. And that may be enough.
In the unlikely case that they both survive until the 14th Party Congress is held in early 2026, their wings are clipped, and they will pose no threat to General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong who is maneuvering to have his protege elected.
The 78-year-old Trong, now in his third term, has already received two age waivers. He was expected to step down before the 14th Congress but shows no signs of retiring. Though he has made counter-corruption the theme of his leadership, constantly warning that it threatens the VCP’s legitimacy, the reality is that he has wielded anti-corruption as a political weapon.
Trong neutralized former Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung at the 12th Congress in 2016, and then went after Dung’s proteges, including Politburo member and rising political star Dinh La Thanh.
Ahead of the 13th Congress, Trong unleashed the head of the Central Inspection Commission, Tran Quoc Vuong on political rivals. Here Trong may have overplayed his hand.
Vuong was his own heir apparent to succeed him as General Secretary. With a shared threat, various factions united to prevent that from happening, and Vuong was not only not elected General Secretary but voted off the Politburo altogether.
Trong appears to have learned his lesson and has been more restrained in in targeting senior leaders, especially his rivals. He can’t give them another reason to rally against him. So Trong has set his sights on the aides and protégés of rivals, coming close enough to politically emasculate them.
It’s not clear whether Trong will last until 2026, but this time around, he’s laid the groundwork for his protege to be elected General Secretary.
According to party statues, you can only be General Secretary if you have served two terms on the Politburo, leaving six eligible candidates: President Nguyen Xuan Phuc, Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính, National Assembly chief Vương Đình Huệ, Minister of Public Security Tô Lâm, Vietnam Fatherland Front Chief Trương Thị Mai, and Deputy Prime Minister Phạm Bình Minh.
Minh is out of the running for the corruption scandal, while To Lam has his own scandal from his $2,000 gold steak fiasco, and is vying for the presidency once his term as Minister of Public Security expires. Truong Thi Mai has the wrong chromosome. President Phuc, who vied for the post in 2021, has allegations of corruption hanging over him and may bow out to save himself. The last thing Phuc wants is a corruption investigation into him, his family, or close associates.
That leaves Prime Minister Chinh, who would be acceptable to Trong, or his preferred choice and protege, Vuong Dinh Hue.
Either way, Trong has used corruption investigations to neutralize opposing factions and individual rivals. To a degree he was thwarted in 2021; he won’t be in the run-up to 2026.
No laughing matter: the Vietnam Communist Party’s thin skin
2022.10.10
An event at Hanoi Medical University had a slide with the Health Ministry’s logo featuring a snake with an envelope in its mouth wrapped around a lancet, in a swipe at rampant medical corruption in the Southeast Asian country
Vietnam’s human rights record is grim. There are now over 150 political prisoners, and the regime is showing even less tolerance of dissent than before. But a recent spate of arrests is revealing one thing: the political elite’s fear of public mockery, as it’s hard to rule an authoritarian system when people have no fear of laughing at the leadership. As Mark Twain said, “Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.”
The Envelope
It was there for everyone to see and to quickly spread like wildfire across Vietnam’s vibrant and 60-million strong FaceBook community.
Projected onto a screen that served as a backdrop to the 17 September 2022 Ministry of Health-sponsored event at Hanoi Medical University was the ministry’s logo, the familiar snake wrapped around a lancet.
But this logo was different, for in the snake’s mouth was an envelope. And no one in Vietnam needs to be told what the envelope symbolizes. Even the state-owned media covered it without comment.
In the eyes of the public that is inured to government corruption, the Ministry of Health’s recent scandals have made them a poster child for government graft and a distinct object of derision.
Earlier this year, a major bribery scandal involving Covid-19 test kits, brought down two members of the Communist Party’s elite Central Committee, including a former Minister of Health. Over 20 other officials in the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and within the esteemed People’s Army’s medical establishment were felled in the $22 million bribery scandal. The current Minister of Health was formally reprimanded for his lax management.
While a $22 million bribery scandal is not unusual in Vietnam anymore, the fact that it touched the VCP General Secretary who awarded the firm a commendation, and so many other senior officials across the government and military, was. This scandal exposed rot across the government.
Police were immediately dispatched to find who replaced the logo, and no doubt someone will be severely punished for this transgression because nothing threatens an authoritarian regime more than people laughing at them.
Mockery is costly in Vietnam. Just ask “Onion Leaf Bae,” a noodle seller in Da Nang, who recently ran afoul of the authorities for his satirical performance that poked fun at To Lam, the Minister of Public Security.
In November 2021, after placing a wreath at the tomb of Karl Marx in London, To Lam and his entourage were filmed being personally served gold-encrusted steaks by the flamboyant Turkish restauranteur Nusret Gökçe. “Salt Bae”, as Gökçe is known, is filmed with his trademark black sunglasses and black latex gloves theatrically cutting and spicing the $2,000 steaks, that he served Lam on a skewer.
Bui Tuan Lam donned the ubiquitous black latex gloves and sunglasses and filmed himself imitating Salt Bae as he spiced his noodles, just days after the Minister’s expose. He posted the video on 11 November 2021, and after a police summons, took the video down from his TikTok account. But the video, which generated howls of laughter across the country, spread across FaceBook.
Police arrested Lam, no relation to the minister, who called himself “Onion Leaf Bae”, in September 2022. He was charged under Article 117 of the Penal Code, for “creating, storing, and disseminating materials and items against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.” According to the state media, Lam had been actively posting seditious material online after the video incident.
Without a doubt, the Minister of Public Security was taken to task within the corridors of power not for eating a $2,000 steak in a country whose average per capita income in 2021 was a mere $3,694, but for being filmed doing so.
Lam, who is serving on his second politburo and is eligible to succeed the current VCP General Secretary, may have taken himself out of contention with this lack of discretion. And after shining an unwelcome light on the entire senior party leadership, To Lam maintained a pretty low profile throughout much of 2022.
While the government will point to Lam’s involvement in online discussions that “violated his democratic freedoms”, most people will conclude that the Minister of Public Security used all the coercive powers that he has at his disposal to target the noodle seller. While a private rebuke from the General Secretary was inevitable, what was intolerable was public mockery.
League of Legends gamer Nguyen Thi Thanh Loan, also known as Milona, is seen in this screenshot from Facebook Video.
The ridicule doesn’t have to be well planned; authorities fear spontaneous acts of derision as well. In September 2022, a popular 22-year-old gamer, Nguyen Thi Thanh Loan, who goes by her handle Milon, made casual remarks during a live session on the FaceBook gaming platform, League of Legends.
“But I'm sure the Presidents don't do anything all day at home, they watch 18+ movies, so they're all bald,” she said in a clear reference to President Nguyen Xuan Phuc, who’s known for his comb-over. Perhaps catching herself, “The head still has hair, the head still has a few strands of hair, right??” But she continued: “Why don't you do anything, just stay at home all day watching 18+ movies.”
Her offhand remark went viral on Facebook. And while police did not arrest her, Loan was fined and put on notice. So was everyone else who had a laugh at Phuc’s expense.
Breaking the Barrier of Fear
The Vietnam People’s Army employs the 10,000-man Force-47, which is charged with both amplifying pro-government and party sites and postings, and trolling dissenters and critics. It is both an influencer and a cyber watchdog. Their most recent task has been to deal with a spate of public ridicule.
And it makes sense because humor works. Criticizing government policies will only get you so far; eyes glaze over legal or historical analyses, but humor goes viral. Vietnam’s netizens already have a rich satirical meme culture. If people can’t stop the corruption, they can laugh at it.
As former Serbian protestors, Srdja Popovic and Mladen Joksik, wrote in Foreign Policy back in 2013: “Today's protestors understand that humor offers a low-cost point of entry for ordinary citizens who don't consider themselves particularly political, but are sick and tired of dictatorship. Make a protest fun, and people don't want to miss out on the action.”
Authoritarian regimes routinely use a range of coercive measures to deter dissent and sew fear amongst the public. Once the public loses that fear and starts to mock their leaders, it could be over faster than Salt Bae cuts up a gold-covered steak.
Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College in Washington and an adjunct at Georgetown University. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Defense, the National War College, Georgetown University or RFA.
