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The four pillars (Vietnamese: tứ trụ) is a Vietnamese informal term for the four most important bureaucrats in the Communist Party and government. In modern usage, the four pillars refer to the General Secretary of the Communist Party, President, Prime Minister and Chairman of the National Assembly.[1][2] Together, they are officially designated as the "Key Leaders of the Party and the State" (Vietnamese: Lãnh đạo chủ chốt của Đảng và Nhà nước) and can be considered as the de facto highest state leaders.[3] Similar to China, there does not exist an official order of precedence for political leaders and rather they are inferred in a de facto fashion. However, since the chairmanship of the Communist Party was abolished, the General Secretary has been the highest ranking official in Vietnam. This division of power is formed prevent dictatorial rule and preserve consensus-based leadership, which is officially called by the Vietnamese Communist Party as "democratic centralism".[4]
The current four pillars in Vietnamese politics
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Unlike other communist states, the General Secretary of the party (or its predecessor) and the President of the state are occupied not by the same person, demonstrating the collective leadership in Vietnam. The only exceptions are: Hồ Chí Minh (1951–69), Trường Chinh (1986), Nguyễn Phú Trọng (2018–21), and Tô Lâm (briefly in 2024). Thus, the Party General Secretaries rarely hold offices that are nominally within the Vietnamese state apparatus except their parliament memberships, however is still managed to be the practical highest leader in the politics of Vietnam.
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