Cuban President regrets death of Vietnam's top leader
Havana, Jul 19 (RHC) Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel mourned the death today, at the age of 80, of Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (PCV), who had been suffering from illnesses.
“We express our heartfelt condolences on the passing of dear comrade Nguyen Phu Trong, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, which we extend to the brotherly Vietnamese people, relatives and loved ones. A faithful friend of #Cuba has died,” Díaz-Canel wrote in X.
The day before, the Caribbean leader lamented the deterioration of Phu Truong's health, and on behalf of the Communist Party, the government and people of Cuba expressed "all our solidarity with the leadership of the Party (Communist Party of Vietnam) and confidence that they will know how to face it with their traditional wisdom."
The Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee, the National Assembly, the President of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the Government and the Central Committee of the Vietnam Fatherland Front will issue a special announcement on the organization of the national mourning for the Party leader, said an official note released in Hanoi.
Nguyen Phu Trong was born on April 14, 1944 into a peasant family in Dong Hoi commune, Dong Anh district of Hanoi, and studied at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Hanoi between 1963 and 1967, when he began working in the Archive Department of the Journal of Study (now the Communist Review).
In 1967 he joined the ranks of the Communist Party of Vietnam and in August 1973 he began a postgraduate course at the Faculty of Political Economy of the Nguyen Ai Quoc School for Higher Training of Militants (now the Ho Chi Minh National Political Academy).
A decade later, in 1983, he defended his doctoral thesis at the Faculty of Party Construction of the Academy of Social Sciences of the Soviet Union. In 1991 and until 1996, he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Communist Review and in that period, he was elected as a member of the Central Committee of the VCP for the seventh term (January 1994), a position he held until the current 13th term.
Since December 1997 he was a member of the Political Bureau, of which he was a permanent member between August 1999 and April 2001, year in which he assumed the presidency of the Central Theoretical Council, responsibility that he temporarily shared with that of Secretary of the Hanoi Party Committee (2000-2006).
Phu Trong was elected deputy to the National Assembly (Parliament) in May 2002, a status he maintained in the XI, XII, XIII and XIV legislatures. Between June 2006 and July 2011, he served as Chairman of the Legislature and Secretary of the Party Committee of the Legislature, as well as member of the Defense and Security Council.
At the 11th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam (2011), he was elected General Secretary of the Central Committee and Secretary of the Central Military Commission, positions he held until his death.
Phu Trong deserved the Order of the Golden Star, the highest honor awarded by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to people with significant and particularly distinguished contributions to the revolutionary cause of the Party and the nation, and the medal of Resistance against the United States of the first category. (Source: Prensa Latina).
