Vietnam policies unaffected by key resignation

WASHINGTON: Vietnamese Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son said on Tuesday the resignation of the country’s second president in little over a year has not affected Hanoi’s foreign and economic policies, given its collective leadership and policymaking.

Asked during a visit to the United States about Vo Van Thuong’s resignation last week, Son told Washington’s Brookings Institution think-tank Vietnam was undergoing an anticorruption campaign that has been welcomed by the international community and businesses.

“The resignation of the president has not affected our foreign policy as well as our own policies of economic development,” he said.

“We have collective leadership, we have collective foreign policy. We have collectivedecided economic development.”

Son cited Communist Party congresses held every five years where economic development plans are set out and agreed among party leaders.“AndIthink(if)oneortwofiguresinthe leadership has resigned, (it) does not change this situation.”

Son, who held talks in Washington on Monday with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and USAID Administrator Samantha Power, said Vietnam hopes Washington will soon recognise it as a market economy.

Thuong’s resignation has raised questions about stability in Vietnam, given he was only elected last year after the sudden dismissal of his predecessor.

With accumulated foreign direct investment higher than its gross domestic product, Vietnam’s stability is crucial to multinationals with large operations in the Southeast Asian manufacturing hub.

That stability, which has been guaranteed for decades by a state tightly controlled by the Communist Party, now looks less certain, analysts say, although they agree the leadership changes will not impact key policies. – Reuters