Vietnam’s Communist Party wins 97% of seats in national assembly election
The new legislature will soon convene to select leaders for key state institutions, as the country begins to suffer the backwash from the conflict in the Middle East.
The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) won nearly 97 percent of the seats in the National Assembly after an election last week, according to results released by the Vietnamese government yesterday.
According to the National Election Council, the CPV won 482 seats in the 500-seat legislature, down from 485 in the outgoing parliament. During the March 15 election, voters also selected delegates for People’s Councils at the province and commune levels.
Tran Thanh Man, the chairperson of the National Assembly and chairman of the National Election Council, praised the conduct of the election, which saw a characteristically high turnout of around 99 percent.
“This was one of the largest and most demanding elections to date, both in terms of scale and workload, particularly as it took place amid new challenges and complexities compared to previous terms,” he told a meeting on Saturday, according to a state media report.
Like the National Assembly itself, which has little power to challenge decisions made by the CPV’s Central Committee, Vietnam’s parliamentary elections are more or less cosmetic. Just under 93 percent of the 864 parliamentary candidates who took part in the March 15 election were members of the CPV. The remaining 7.5 percent were independents, who were elected to the remaining 18 seats in the Assembly, up from 14 at the last legislative election in 2021.
On Saturday, Ta Thi Yen, the vice chair of the Committee for Deputy Affairs, said that the increase “marks a meaningful expansion of democracy and representation within the National Assembly.”
However, the most important aspect of the election was that the formation of a new National Assembly opens the way to key state personnel appointments in the coming weeks. As Reuters explains, the Assembly is scheduled to hold its first weeks-long session from April 6. During that plenary, lawmakers are due to approve candidates for top state posts, including the president and the prime minister, who the party has nominated at its 14th National Congress in January
CPV General Secretary To Lam, who was confirmed in his position at the National Congress, is widely expected to be chosen as president as well, replicating the structure next door in China, where Xi Jinping is both the head of state and the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.
Whatever leadership emerges from the upcoming National Assembly session, it will face the negative backwash from the conflict in the Middle East, in particular, the impacts of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz on energy markets. In Vietnam, petrol prices have risen by around 50 percent and diesel prices by about 70 percent since the start of the Iran war on February 28, with worse likely to come.
While Vietnam produces its own oil, its fast-growing economy has become increasingly reliant on imports. Around 85 percent of the country’s crude oil imports come from the Middle East, the majority of it from Kuwait. While Vietnam is much less reliant on the Gulf for refined petroleum products, it imports virtually all of these from Asian refiners such as South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia, which may soon be forced to limit their own exports, if they haven’t already done so.
While Vietnam is less directly exposed than other nations, one analysis by MUFG Research pointed to the potentially deleterious impacts of a protracted conflict: “With possible production and supply chain disruptions negatively impacting energy-intensive sectors such as manufacturing, transportation, travel, and food production, a lengthy Strait of Hormuz closure scenario may well morph into something akin to COVID lockdowns, and coupled with sharp increases in commodity prices.”
By Sebastian Strangio – The Diplomat – March 23, 2026