The 8th Central Committee Conference (Plenum) of the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam in its 13th term will open in Hanoi on Monday, October 2, and will last seven days until October 8. The focus of this plenum will be on high-level personnel for the 14th National Congress of the party scheduled in early 2025. And as usual, the Central Committee will conduct a vote of confidence member of the Politburo and the Secretariat.
After that, the 6th session of the 15th National Assembly which opens on October 23 and legislators will take votes of confidence for 44 positions elected and approved by the National Assembly. There will then be a vote on the list of officials receiving votes of confidence.
In addition, the 8th Plenum also has the content of reviewing and making decisions on Party discipline, for personnel monitored by the Politburo and the Secretariat.
One: Regarding personnel issues
The 8th Plenum will discuss and approve the personnel planning list of the Central Committee in its 14th term, according to nominations from party committees at all levels. With the content, consider the structure of the planned positions of provincial party secretaries, city party committees, and party committees of centrally-run blocs; Ministerial positions and equivalent positions are deputy secretaries, chairmen of People’s Committees, People’s Councils, heads of provincial and city National Assembly delegations, heads of Government agencies, deputy heads of departments, ministries, branches, Fatherland Front, socio-political organizations; Central units, commanders, political commissars at the military zone level and equivalent. At the same time, the 8th Plenum will also elect subcommittee heads to serve the 14th Congress in early 2026.
Two: Regarding the issue of Party discipline
At the 8th Plenum, the Central Committee will likely vote to discipline Mr. Trinh Van Chien, former Secretary of the Thanh Hoa Provincial Party Committee and Le Duc Tho, Secretary of the Ben Tre Provincial Party Committee. Specifically:
Mr. Trinh Van Chien, member of the 12th Party Central Committee, former Secretary of Thanh Hoa Provincial Party Committee for the 2015-2020 tenure, “impurely supported” and had a child with hotgirl Quynh Anh. Trinh Van Chien also received hundreds of billions of dong in bribes, through projects of Trinh Van Quyet (FLC) and Nguyen Thi Thanh Nhan (AIC). According to reports, Trinh Van Chien is currently under house arrest and banned from leaving the country from April 2023, pending disciplinary action. And there is a high possibility that Trinh Van Chien will be expelled from the Party. After the 8th Plenum, Chien will be probed and arrested.
The second official is Le Duc Tho, Secretary of the Ben Tre Provincial Party Committee, junior to Nguyen Van Binh (aka Binh Ruoi). The reason was that Secretary Le Duc Tho was discovered by the State Bank to have assets, including bank deposits and stocks, amounting to more than VND3 trillion ($122 million).
Secretary Le Duc Tho was said to have desire to become Governor of the State Bank, so his teammates stabbed him in the back. Some predictions say that Le Duc Tho will be dismissed later and retire at the age of 50.
Side stories before the opening day:
A source from Ba Dinh said that the duration of the 8th Plenum will be long, equivalent to the number of days for the “hinge” Central Conferences before each Party Congress, which means that the 8th Plenum has too many difficult problem that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, the Politburo and the Secretariat must resolve within the Party.
That is the problem of General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, in his position as Head of the Human Resources Subcommittee of the 12th and 13th Congresses. The General Secretary will have to explain the questions of the majority of Central Committee members, about the selection status. Personnel are arbitrary, emotional, factional, or show signs of tolerating the situation of buying and selling positions of Central Committee members, choosing and arranging personnel in an unscientific and unfair manner, leading to a system of human resource crisis.
Specifically, according to Central members, up to now, the 13th Central Committee has completed nearly half of its term. However, as a result, from the number of 180 official Central Committee members, there are now only 167 members left. There have been 13 members of the Central Committee been fired, among them are 2 members of the Politburo.
It is known that within the Party, there are many members of the Central Committee secretly criticize and blame the leader Nguyen Phu Trong who is also the head of the Human Resources Subcommittee of the 12th and 13th Congresses.
What will be the future of General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong? Will he be able to survive to fulfill his ambition of being General Secretary for 4 consecutive terms, to record in the historical record of the Communist Party of Vietnam? After the 8th Plenum, there will be an answer.
Thoibao.de (Translated)
