Nguyen Huu Tho

Who was Nguyen Huu Tho?

Nguyễn Hữu Thọ was acting President of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam from 30 March 1980 to 4 July 1981.

A French-educated lawyer in Cochinchina, Thọ was also a member of the French Section of the Workers' International and a participant in the Vietnamese fight for independence. He joined the Vietnamese National Popular League in 1948, Communist Party in 1949, and was kept in detention from 1950–52, he later came to support the 1954 Geneva agreements, but opposed the government of South Vietnam's president, Ngô Đình Diệm. In August 1954, he founded the Committee in Defense of Peace and the Geneva Agreements. The committee was crushed and banned by the South Vietnamese government in November the same year, and Thọ and other members of the organization were jailed after a police raid.

He remained in detention until 1961, when he managed to escape. Free, Thọ became Chairman of the Central Committee of the National Liberation Front. In 1965, he delivered an anti-imperialist speech, a booklet was later published in English, entitled SPEECH. His title was given as: President of the Presidium of the Consultative Council of the South Viet Nam [sic] National Front for Liberation on the 5th founding anniversary of the N.F.L. In 1969, he came Chairman of the Consultative Council of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam, a post he retained until South Vietnam was incorporated into North Vietnam in 1976.