The Central Party Committee, a top decision-making body in Communist Party-ruled Vietnam, approved Thuong’s resignation just about a year after his election.

Vo Van Thuong, the president of Vietnam, has resigned after just a single year in office.



According to a government statement on Wednesday, March 20, the Vietnamese Communist Party has accepted President Vo Van Thuong’s resignation.



Thuong had broken party norms, the government claimed in a statement, and such “shortcomings had negatively impacted public opinion, affecting the reputation of the Party, State, and him personally”.



Less than a year after Thuong’s election, the Central Party Committee, the highest decision-making body in Vietnam administered by the Communist Party, accepted his resignation.



Despite being one of the top four governmental offices in the country of Southeast Asia, the president’s job is primarily ceremonial.

The government statement did not elaborate on Thuong’s shortcomings, but major leadership changes in the one-party state have recently been all linked to the wide-ranging anti-bribery campaign. It is aimed at stamping out widespread corruption but is also suspected by critics to be a tool for political infighting.

Foreign investors and diplomats have repeatedly blamed the campaign for slowing down decisions in a country which is already grappling with cumbersome bureaucracy.

Thuong, 53, quit days after Vietnamese police announced the arrest for alleged corruption a decade ago of a former head of central Vietnam’s Quang Ngai province, who served while Thuong was party chief there.

He had also been a senior party official of economic hub Ho Chi Minh City, which has been rocked by a multi-billion-dollar long-running financial scam, for which a large trial is currently underway.

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