To Lam Confirmed as Vietnam’s Top Leader Until at Least 2026

President To Lam of Vietnam, best known for implementing a sweeping anticorruption drive, will become the country’s next Communist Party general secretary, the government’s Politburo announced on Saturday.

General secretary is the top job in Vietnam’s political system of collective leadership, and Mr. Lam was named to the post temporarily in July, after the death of Nguyen Phu Trong, who had been general secretary since 2011.

The appointment gives Mr. Lam the chance to consolidate his position within the party before it holds its congress in 2026 to select the country’s top leaders for the following five years.

“He might be the starting horse in the race for 2026, but he has to go through a particular process,” said Carl Thayer, a Vietnam expert and emeritus professor of politics at the University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia. He added: “There is a lot of space in there for people to oppose him.”

Mr. Lam’s rise from within the party ranks has been rapid. He was named president in May after serving as the minister of public security. In that position, Mr. Lam implemented Mr. Trong’s anticorruption campaign, known as “blazing furnace,” which targeted Vietnam’s rampant official corruption, sending many officials to jail and leading others to resign.

He pledged to continue the effort as president, even as business leaders in Vietnam and international investors had begun to complain that the campaign had led to paralysis for new projects, sending a chill through the economy.