12/04/2026

theSunday Special X ON SUNDAY APR 12, 2026

From secret policeman to changemaker

A FORMER security enforcer who has turned his axe on red tape, Vietnam’s top leader To Lam is a classical music lover with a sometimes controversial taste for fine steak. In less than two years as general secretary of the Communist Party, he has swept aside rivals and centralised power, adding the presidency to his portfolio on Tuesday in addition to the top party job. Diplomats and analysts describe the 68-year-old as a skilled political operator and calculated risk-taker whose biggest bets have paid off. Elevated to party chief in August 2024 after the death of his predecessor, he accelerated a sweeping anti-corruption drive that ensnared thousands of officials. Analysts say it removed many of his opponents, leaving him as the most dominant leader in decades and paving the way for him to unify leadership of the party and the state as Xi Jinping did in China. Lam, who was reappointed general secretary in January, has ripped up bureaucratic red tape and empowered the private sector, but also tightened media restrictions and squashed dissent. He has “streamlined everything”, said Vietnam expert Carl Thayer, calling him “absolutely dominant”. “I don’t want to call him the Trump of Vietnam but he’s a leader who is trying to consolidate power to make swift and quick decisions,” Thayer told AFP in January. Le Hong Hiep, senior fellow at Singapore’s When Rom and nine other men – shackled and escorted onto a plane by US authorities – landed in the kingdom of Eswatini in October, they were greeted on the tarmac by a squad of “military guys with guns and masks”, the 43-year-old said. “I didn’t know what was going to happen,” he told AFP in an interview in Phnom Penh, where he was repatriated in late March. “I didn’t understand why I was being deported to Africa because I’m Cambodian.” Rom is one of around 20 men the United States has deported to landlocked Eswatini, bordering South Africa and Mozambique, under a Trump administration scheme challenged in courts and described by rights advocates as akin to “human trafficking”. Eswatini, Africa’s last absolute monarchy, is among several “third countries” accepting migrants under shadowy deals enabling the US president’s push for mass deportations. The nation formerly known as Swaziland agreed to accept up to 160 deportees in exchange for around US$5.1 million (RM20.6 million), with plans to forward them to their home countries after Washington said their direct repatriations were denied. But Rom, living in the United States with “permanent resident” status since 1985 after his family fled Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime, is just the second to be repatriated from Eswatini, after a Jamaican was returned home last year. The remainder may still be trapped inside

ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, said Lam’s new dual role has “effectively turned him into Vietnam’s ‘supreme leader’”. Born in 1957 in Hung Yen, then part of communist North Vietnam, Lam graduated from the police academy in 1979 and joined the secretive Public Security Ministry. He rose steadily through the ranks, spending four decades in the department that monitors and surveils critics of the one-party state. Vietnam ranked 158th out of 193 countries in the most recent Freedom in the World report by the US think tank Freedom House, with a score of 20 out of 100, putting it in the “not free” category. As public security minister, Lam was accused of helping organise the Cold War style 2017 kidnapping of a fugitive Vietnamese executive from a park in Germany. Hanoi denied orchestrating the plot but it soured relations with Berlin for years. As public security minister, he weaponised the anti-graft drive known as “blazing furnace” initiated by then general secretary Nguyen Phu Trong. Lam used investigations to “systematically take down rivals in the politburo who were eligible to become general secretary”, said Zachary Abuza, a Vietnam expert at the National War College in Washington. But he has made one notable misstep, a video of him eating a gold-leaf-covered steak at the London restaurant of Nusret Gokce, better known as Salt Bae, sparked a social media firestorm in 2021, with the dish

reportedly costing more than US$1,000 (RM4,030), above Vietnam’s median monthly income. One noodle seller, dubbed “Onion Bae” for his ostentatious presentation of sliced scallions, was jailed after posting a parody of the Lam video. Lam was named president, considered the second-highest role in Vietnamese politics, in May 2024, after his predecessor was felled by the anti-graft campaign. Less than two months later, Trong died and Lam succeeded him as general secretary, eventually relinquishing the presidency. He shocked the country with rapid administrative reforms to streamline bureaucracy and boost the economy, cutting the number of government ministries and agencies from 30 to 22 and nearly halving provincial and city administrations, from 63 to 34. About 147,000 people have been made redundant or taken early retirement. Lam, who as security minister approved construction of a major Hanoi opera house, also pushed ambitious infrastructure projects, including transport and energy. He is “decisive, impatient with drift”, said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, adding that he has “sped up decision-making”. Lam also reacted rapidly to Donald Trump’s announcement of 46% tariffs by the United States, its top trading partner, in April. Less than two months later, Vietnam approved a US$1.5 billion proposal for a

Lam shocked the country with rapid reforms.

Trump Organisation golf course, and soon afterwards the tariff rate was negotiated down to 20% for most goods. Announcing the deal in July, Trump hailed Lam on his Truth Social platform: “Dealing with General Secretary To Lam, which I did personally, was an absolute pleasure.” – AFP

Cambodian deported by US faced ‘misery’ in Eswatini prison A CAMBODIAN refugee long-settled in the United States, ex-convict Pheap Rom, remains bewildered at how he wound up behind bars in the African nation of Eswatini for months after being swept up in Donald Trump’s deportation blitz.

‘Uniquely barbaric’ Much of Trump’s deportation campaign has been executed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), criticised for using heavy-handed tactics. In July, when the first deportees were sent to Eswatini, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said on social media they were “so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back”. But Rom and his lawyer Tin Thanh Nguyen expressed doubts the agency even tried to deport him directly to Cambodia, the only country where he has citizenship. Nguyen is struggling to piece together the logic that led to his client being marooned in a country where he had no ties. The lawyer painted a picture of a chaotic process, saying Rom was not interviewed in the United States to verify his nationality and was registered for deportation to Thailand, the country where he was born in a refugee camp. “If ICE was requesting travel documents from Thailand, they went to the wrong country,” Nguyen said. Chann Rotana, a spokesperson for Cambodia’s Foreign Ministry, said the US had previously sent Cambodian deportees to the country directly with no issues. “We don’t know why the US this time sent him to Eswatini,” the spokesman said. Now living in Phnom Penh after the Cambodian government facilitated his repatriation from Eswatini, Rom said he was still “getting used to the freedom” but was ready to move on. Eventually, he hopes to find work, stay in touch with his relatives in the United States and start a new family in Cambodia, he said. “I want to create a new memory here, because this is my second chance in life.” – AFP

Rom said he hopes to start a new family in Cambodia. – AFPPIC

had served their time and looked at them as if they were “criminals because of what the (US) administration was portraying us to be”. For the first two months at the Matsapha Correctional Centre, Rom said he and fellow deportees “went through misery”, allowed outdoors for only 15 minutes a day and given one weekly phone call. “We had an attorney there who was willing to try to come and talk to us, but they weren’t letting that attorney in,” he said. Lawyers in Eswatini have corroborated his claim, saying they have been repeatedly denied access to people expelled by the United States who have been detained without charge. Eswatini’s government has said US deportees were “in good hands” and receiving healthcare, including counselling.

the deportation process, opaque even to those inside it. ‘In good hands’ Rom served a 15-year prison sentence in the United States after pleading guilty to attempted murder for firing a gun during two neighbourhood disputes, leaving several people wounded. “I know what I did was wrong. I accepted my punishment,” he said. He was detained by immigration authorities upon his release in November 2024, and his green card was revoked after an immigration judge ordered his deportation due to his felony conviction. He expected to be sent to Cambodia. But landing in Eswatini was like turning back the clock to his prison term, Rom said. His jailers seemed unaware that the men