Le Kha Phieu

Lê Khả Phiêu (born December 27, 1931 at Đông Khê Commune, Đông Sơn District, Thanh Hóa Province) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam from December 1997 to April 2001 and has a military background.^[1]

He has usually been seen as a conservative.^[2] However, this categorization has been challenged by Gainsborough, who notes that Phiêu made some remarkably outspoken comments about problems in the party before the Tenth Party Congress. He criticized what he called 'illness of partyization' (bệnh đảng hoá), meaning that the Party controls everything.^[3]

Mr Phiêu was a protégé of his predecessor, Đỗ Mười.^[4] He was elevated to the Politburo in the early 1990s.^[5]

References

References

• Bolton, Kent (1999): “Domestic Sources of Vietnam’s Foreign Policy: Normalizing Relations with the United States”. in Thayer, Carlyle A., Amer, Ramses (ed.): “Vietnamese Foreign Policy in Transition”. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore
• Gainsborough, Martin (2010): Vietnam - Rethinking the State. Zed Books, London & New York