Nouhak Phoumsavanh

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Nouhak Phoumsavan

Nouhak Phoumsavanh or Phoumsavan (born April 9, 1914) was a longtime Pathet Lao revolutionary and communist party official who succeeded Kaysone Phomvihane as president of Laos on the latter's death in November 1992. He had been First Deputy Prime Minister when Kaysone was Prime Minister until 1991.

Though the presidency had become an executive position, prime minister Khamtai Siphandon had taken the country's most powerful position, leadership of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party, and when he decided to move from prime minister to president in 1998, Nouhak Phoumsavanh, by then one of the oldest heads of state in the world, retired.