HANOI (Reuters) – Vietnam’s Communist Party has nominated Vo Van Thuong as the country’s new president, two party sources said on Wednesday, following the sudden forced resignation in January of his predecessor as part of a sweeping anti-corruption campaign.
Thuong, 52, is the youngest member of the party’s Politburo, the country’s top decision-making body, and is widely regarded as being close to General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnam’s most powerful figure.
Trong is the main architect of the party’s “blazing furnace” crackdown on graft, under which hundreds of officials have been investigated and many forced to quit, including former President Nguyen Xuan Phuc and two deputy prime ministers.
The selection of Thuong by the party’s Central Committee upholds an earlier decision by the Politburo. His nomination will need approval by the rubber-stamp National Assembly, which is due to hold an extraordinary session on Thursday and a formal sitting in May.
The government in a statement on Wednesday said the central party committee had agreed on a nomination for president, without naming the candidate.
(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio @fraguarascio, Vu Khanh and Phuong Nguyen; Editing by Martin Petty)
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