Vietnam Names New President, Premier; 2 Called ‘Transitional’

Vietnam on Thursday named a new premier and a new president to replace the last of the legendary leaders who helped found the Indochinese Communist Party and then guided the Vietnamese to victory in wars with France and the United States.

Pham Hung was named to succeed Pham Van Dong, 79, who had served as premier since 1955. Vo Chi Cong was appointed to the largely ceremonial post of president in place of Truong Chinh, 80, who had held the office since 1981 and was a leading political figure for decades.

Hung and Cong, both veteran revolutionaries in their mid-70s, were named on the second day of the new National Assembly’s opening session, the Voice of Vietnam radio said in a broadcast monitored in Bangkok.

Within the senior leadership, Pham Van Dong and Truong Chinh were the last of the small group of revolutionaries who helped independence leader Ho Chi Minh found the party in 1930.

Analysts said that Hung, who ranks just below party General Secretary Nguyen Van Linh, and Cong, the No. 3 Politburo member, apparently were chosen as “transitional figures” awaiting the rise of younger leaders able to preside over urgent economic reforms.

The changes capped a yearlong overhaul of the party and government.

Dong and Chinh, the former party chief, had resigned their party posts at the sixth national party congress last December. They left after admitting “serious mistakes” in handling the economic crisis and were replaced by Linh and others favoring reforms.

Pham Hung, 75, has been a member of the Politburo since 1956 and a vice premier since 1958. A southerner, he held key party positions in the south, and was political commissar of the Viet Cong guerrillas who fought U.S. and South Vietnamese forces, and together with North Vietnam’s army, defeated the Saigon government in 1975.

From 1980 until February this year, Hung headed the Interior Ministry, and he rose to No. 2 in the Politburo when Dong and Chinh resigned in December.

Vo Chi Cong, 74, also joined the Communist movement as a youth and held party and military posts in central Vietnam, and in the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War.

As agriculture minister in 1977-79, Cong oversaw reforms allowing farmers to market whatever they produced above state-assigned quotas. The system was credited with boosting output. He became first vice premier in 1986, replacing To Huu, who was fired for alleged economic mismanagement.