He was known to be very ill, but his death is yet another development in a series of unexpected events at the top of the Vietnamese state apparatus: The general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), Nguyen Phu Trong, died in Hanoi on the afternoon of Friday, July 19, at age 80. Rumors of his death had been circulating since the previous day, prompting some experts to suggest that the regime's number one may have passed away as early as Thursday.

That same day, all the members of the political bureau went to visit their dying leader on his hospital bed, as he was awarded the Gold Star, the country's highest distinction, for services rendered to the fatherland. The death of this Leninist, who ruled the country with an iron fist, is unlikely to change the policy of security and social control that he introduced when he took over the helm of the party on January 19, 2011.

On the eve of the announcement of his death, after indicating that Trong would be forced to take a break "for health reasons," the media added that the president, To Lam, would assume the interim leadership of the party. The 67-year-old Lam, a close friend of the deceased, had been head of public security, the political police, before becoming president on May 22.

The leadership of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam has been in turmoil for some time. On March 21, after just one year in office, the republic's president, Vo Van Thuong, was brutally forced to resign after being implicated in corruption cases. His predecessor, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, was also pressured to step down in 2023 for similar reasons, just two years after taking office.

In Vietnam, supreme power may be held by the party's general secretary, but the president is nonetheless considered the country's number three (the prime minister is number two). The rapid changes in this position have led to a certain degree of instability. In April, the president of the National Assembly, Vuong Dinh Hue, the fourth most important figure in the country, was also forced to resign. The political bureau now has only 12 members instead of 18, due to incessant internal purges. Never before in Vietnam's history has there been such a hemorrhage.

Trong was born on April 14, 1944, on the outskirts of the capital Hanoi, and devoted his entire life to the Communist Party. After obtaining a doctorate in history from Moscow's Academy of Sciences in 1983, he became one of the party's leading specialists in political theory at the turn of the century.

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