HANOI (Bloomberg): Vietnam’s National Assembly dismissed another deputy prime minister for violating anti-corruption rules, continuing an anti-graft campaign spearheaded by the late Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.
The parliament accepted the resignation of Le Minh Khai, as the Party Central Committee had earlier this month, according to a TV broadcast of the meeting on Monday.
Khai oversaw the economy, and in June urged Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to grant Vietnam market economy status. The Biden administration rejected the change in classification in early August.
Khai was punished for violations linked to an investigation into the Dai Ninh resort-residential complex project in Lam Dong province, according to information on the government’s website. Mai Tien Dung, the former head of the Government Office, was detained by police in May in relation to the probe.
Vietnam’s party secretariat ruled that the party unit of the government inspectorate violated regulations by approving the Dai Ninh project’s extension, according to an Aug. 13 statement on the government’s website. Khai was head of the unit from 2018 to April, 2021, the government said.
Representatives of Khai were not immediately available for comment.
The National Assembly also dismissed Deputy Prime Minister Tran Luu Quang, who becomes leader of the party’s central economic commission.
The parliament appointed three new deputy prime ministers - Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son, Finance Minister Ho Duc Phoc and Nguyen Hoa Binh, who was dismissed from his position as chief justice of the Supreme People’s Court of Vietnam.
The anti-corruption campaign has led to the detention of scores of senior officials and business executives in Vietnam, where two presidents, two additional deputy prime ministers and other party officials previously quit office. President To Lam, officially installed as the new head of the party on Aug. 3, said he would "resolutely” continue an aggressive push to stamp out graft while working to ease bureaucratic bottlenecks to help the economy.
The "blazing furnace” campaign, as Trong called it, remains popular among Vietnamese, many of whom express admiration for Lam on social media, said Giang Nguyen, a visiting senior fellow with the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. Vietnam’s anti-corruption drive has helped lift its ranking from 113th in 2016 to 83rd last year in Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index.
However, non-stop investigations have slowed the gears of government.
"Vietnamese businesspeople have shared a view on social media that parts of the government are paralyzed by a fear of being caught up in the anti-corruption investigations,” Giang Nguyen said ahead of today’s parliamentary decision.
Vietnam’s wide-ranging yet non-transparent anti-corruption campaign is viewed by some observers as a way to also remove political rivals amid behind-the-scenes power struggles.
Foreign investors, Giang Nguyen said, "don’t know who is up and who is down in the power struggle that has been going on for over a year now.” This is creating anxiety that Vietnam’s crackdowns could result in a "socialist-inspired nationalism” that has occurred in China under President Xi Jinping, resulting in a less-friendly attitude toward foreign investors, Giang Nguyen said.
But Lam, he added, is known as a pragmatist rather than an ideologue, valuing "foreign investors and their role in taking the Vietnamese economy to the next level of development.”
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