General Secretary Tho Lam has pledged to continue rapid reform and will continue to lead the Communist Party of Vietnam.
Published January 23, 2026
The Communist Party of Vietnam has reappointed Mr. Toram as general secretary, extending his position as the Southeast Asian nation’s top leader for the next five years.
Lam was “unanimously” re-elected as general secretary, according to an announcement made at the conclusion of the party’s quinquennial party congress in the capital Hanoi on Friday.
Recommended stories
list of 4 itemsend of list
The party central committee “unanimously elected Mr. Lam to continue as general secretary,” the party said in a statement.
Tran Thanh Manh, speaker of Vietnam’s National Assembly, said his party leader received 180 out of 180 votes to retain the top job.
Lam’s re-election as party leader will send a reassuring message to foreign investors, who cite political stability as a key factor in Vietnam’s attractiveness as a business environment.
Lam, 68, is also seeking to become president, and a decision on her appointment will be announced at a later date.
Earlier this week, Lam promised hundreds of parliamentary delegates sitting in red-upholstered chairs in a red-carpeted conference hall beneath a towering statue of Communist Party founder and liberation hero Ho Chi Minh to continue fighting corruption and ensuring annual growth of more than 10 percent until 2030.
Speaking during the adjournment of Parliament and his reappointment on Friday, Lam pledged to do his best to meet the expectations of the Vietnamese people.
Lam’s retention at the top of the party follows the implementation of sweeping reforms in some areas that have shocked the country with their speed and severity since becoming party general secretary at the end of 2024.
He eliminated the entire government bureaucracy, abolished eight ministries and agencies, and cut nearly 150,000 jobs from the national payroll, while pushing forward with ambitious rail and power projects and rooting out corruption.
In a speech this week, Lam said he wants to change the country’s economic growth model, which has relied on cheap labor and exports for decades, and transform Vietnam into an upper-middle income economy by 2030 by focusing on innovation and efficiency.
He also warned of the overlapping threats Vietnam faces “from natural disasters and floods to epidemics, security risks, intense strategic competition, and large-scale disruptions in energy and food supply chains.”
Vietnam, a country of 100 million people, is both a repressive one-party state and a bright spot in the region’s economy, where the Communist Party is seeking rapid growth to strengthen its legitimacy at home and abroad.
