Le Kha Phieu

Who is Le Kha Phieu?

Lê Khả Phiêu was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam from December 1997 to April 2001 and has a military background. He served in the Vietnam People's Army during the First and Second Indochina Wars, join in Cambodian war, the head of the General political Department of the People's Army.

He has usually been seen as a conservative. However, this categorization has been challenged by historian Martin 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', meaning that the Party controls everything. Phiêu was a protégé of his predecessor, Đỗ Mười. He was elevated to the Politburo in the early 1990s.