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Vietnam’s ruling Communist party has appointed President To Lam as its general secretary, the country’s most powerful position, to succeed longtime chief Nguyen Phu Trong, who died two weeks ago.

Lam, a former public security minister, was elected unanimously by the party’s central committee on Saturday, a government newspaper reported. He ascended to the role of president just two months ago. It remains unclear whether he will hold both positions.

Lam’s appointment comes at a crucial time for Vietnam, which has become a regional manufacturing powerhouse as companies rush to diversify from China amid escalating geopolitical tensions.

However, concerns about Vietnam’s ability to attract more investment have grown in recent months as a sweeping corruption crackdown — which Lam oversaw as minister — has triggered bureaucratic paralysis and rare political instability in the one-party state.  

Following his appointment, Lam told party’s delegates that he would continue to pursue the fight against corruption “without any exceptions”, state media reported. The crackdown has achieved positive results, he said. 

Lam, 67, also vowed to maintain Vietnam’s foreign policy, saying he would “inherit and promote” the legacy of Trong, who held Vietnam’s top position for 13 years until his death in July.

Trong was the architect of the anti-corruption crackdown, and shaped Vietnam’s independent foreign policy, which deftly balanced Hanoi’s ties with major powers.

The appointment caps a meteoric rise for Lam, a former police officer. He became president in late May following his predecessor’s resignation due to unspecified “violations and shortcomings” amid corruption investigations.

The crackdown has seen a dramatic reshuffle of the country’s top ranks and the arrests of hundreds of government officials. Two presidents have resigned since January 2023, and a real estate tycoon was sentenced to death for her role in a $12bn fraud. Critics say the corruption crackdown has also ensnared government critics and political rivals. 

Lam was seen as Trong’s right-hand man in implementing the graft crackdown, but he has also been criticised for lavish spending. In 2021, a video was posted of him eating a gold leaf-covered steak at an upscale London restaurant run by the celebrity chef Nusret Gökçe, popularly known as Salt Bae. The video prompted controversy in Vietnam and was eventually taken down by the chef.

Lam’s ministry has also been leading the charge on arrests of government critics and rights activists, and his elevation to the top job is likely to stir further concerns over civic freedoms in the communist state.

Holding two posts simultaneously as party chief and president would raise additional concerns about power consolidation, analysts have said. Vietnam has a four-person collective leadership, which includes the Communist party chief, president, prime minister and National Assembly chair. 

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US defence secretary Lloyd Austin has withdrawn plea deals reached earlier this week with the accused mastermind behind the September 11 2001 terror attacks and two accomplices, an extraordinary about-face in politically charged cases that have dragged on for years.

The brief memorandum published on Friday came just two days after the Pentagon announced Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi had reached deals with the head of the military tribunal in Guntánamo Bay. The three men had been held at the US military base in Cuba for nearly two decades, where they faced the death penalty.

Austin also revoked the authority of retired Brigadier General Susan Escallier, who oversaw the Guantánamo war court, to enter into the agreements with the three prisoners, reserving such power for himself. Escallier was appointed to her post in 2023.

“I have determined that in light of the significance of the decision to enter into pre-trial agreements with the accused in the above-referenced case, responsibility for such a decision should rest with me as the superior convening authority under the Military Commissions Act of 2009,” Austin wrote in the memo addressed to Escallier.

“Effective immediately, I hereby withdraw your authority in the above-referenced case to enter into a pre-trial agreement and reserve such authority to myself. Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements that you signed on July 31, 2024” in the cases in question, the memo stated.

The agreements reached on Wednesday had prompted a fierce backlash from Republicans, who accused the Biden administration of negotiating with individuals accused of taking part in a terror attack that killed nearly 3,000 people and dramatically altered US domestic and foreign policy.

The party’s Senate leader Mitch McConnell called the decision “a revolting abdication of the government’s responsibility”. It had also led to some criticism from the families of those who died on September 11, when attackers crashed planes into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania.

A lawyer for Mohammed did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The exact terms of the three men’s original pleas were not disclosed by the US government, but they were expected to plead guilty and avoid a full trial. The proceedings had been mired in legal and ethical controversy over the length of the defendants’ custody without trial and instances of torture.

Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the attacks, was captured in 2003 in Pakistan, and held at CIA prisons before being sent to Guantánamo Bay, where a military detention facility was opened during the administration of George W Bush to house prisoners captured during the US’s “war on terror” following the September 11 attacks. The agency has since been found to have subjected him to waterboarding, a form of torture, at least 183 times.

A report by a Senate select committee in 2014 found that “internal CIA records describe the waterboarding of [Khaled Sheikh Mohammed] as evolving into a ‘series of near drownings’”.

Harrowing accounts of such techniques sparked a fierce debate within the US over the legality of cases against Mohammed and other prisoners, and the ongoing litigation became a deeply divisive topic in Washington.