Reformer appointed new Vietnamese PM
Reformer appointed new Vietnamese PM
HANOI (Agencies): Vietnam's National Assembly appointed a popular southern reformer as prime minister yesterday, completing the second leg of a long-awaited leadership reshuffle.
Assembly sources said Phan Van Khai, who stood unopposed for the post, won a 98-percent approval rating from the newly elected legislature in a vote behind closed doors.
Khai, 63, replaces Vo Van Kiet -- a man more than 10 years his senior -- in a position which puts him at the helm of continuing efforts to adapt the nation from a Soviet-style command-led system to a free-market economy.
Considered a canny technocrat and a quiet champion of the "renovation", Khai used his acceptance speech to pledge quicker reform in the face of tougher and more complicated challenges.
"During the reform process the achievements that we have made ... have created great potential and opportunities for us," he said.
"However, development does not just move downstream, there will surely be bigger difficulties and challenges that need to be overcome, the demands of life that need to be met are higher and more complicated," he said.
He said that an administration had to be built which is close to the people, clean, effective and capable.
Khai was originally mooted for the prime minister's post before the 1996 Communist Party congress, but a flurry of damaging gossip and rumors about the business activities of family members held him back at that time.
Diplomats say he has a good grasp of economic issues and so will be well-placed to steer Vietnam through the difficulties of its first serious downturn since reforms were launched.
But they also say he will have to demonstrate that he can match the stamina and energy of his predecessor.
Khai's election comes a day after Communist Party technocrat Tran Duc Luong, a Russian-trained geologist, was elected president.
The appointment of the two men is the first reshuffle of the country's leadership triumvirate in five years.
The third position in the three-man ruling collective, that of Communist Party secretary-general, is not at stake in this week's changes.
One of Khai's first tasks will be to nominate candidates for deputy prime ministerial and other cabinet posts.
The assembly, Vietnam's parliament, is scheduled to vote on their appointments before the end of the week.
Carlyle Thayer, head of the political science department of the Australian Defense Force Academy in Canberra said the new line up reflects "fantastic changes at the state level ... repeating a pattern of Vietnam's groping to the economic systems to fit society".
The new government's two most immediate concerns will be ensuring domestic stability in the wake of violent rural protests and assuring international donors and investors that economic reforms are on track.
But Thayer also notes that genuine structural changes, especially to the state sector, will not be forthcoming until the ruling Communist Party endorses such a plan and that will have to await a decision on the successor to 80-year-old party general secretary Do Muoi.
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