Do we like them?

Do we like Luong Cuong?

Our score: 5 out of 10. A career party-and-army man with no harmful words of his own turned up, but little on people's rights and a system critics say shuts out the public.

Luong Cuong is a soldier first and a politician second. Born in 1957 in Phu Tho province, he joined the army in 1975 and spent decades as a political officer, working up from army corps commissar to head of the army's General Department of Politics. He made general in 2019 and joined the Politburo in 2021.

In May 2024 he moved into the party's Secretariat, and in October 2024 the National Assembly elected him State President after a run of turmoil that saw four heads of state in about two years. Analysts called him politically inexperienced, and Canberra academic Carl Thayer said an exception to Politburo rules was needed because he had held only military and party posts.

Now the harm check. We found no speeches or campaigns from him against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the climate, and no sign he has pushed conspiracy theories. We also found nothing on LGBTQ+ issues from him either way, so that's a gap, not a tick. The criticism is about the system: a U.S.-based lawyer who watches Vietnamese politics said the public stays sidelined, merely watching political changes as spectators.

On climate he said the right things. At the UN in New York in September 2025 he said countries must deliver on their climate finance commitments, and that developed countries should lead on cutting emissions. It's a speech, not a policy he personally passed, since the presidency sits behind the party chief in power.

On the human side, he visited flood-hit Go Noi commune in Da Nang in November 2025 and urged local authorities to give maximum support and get power, water, food and medicine to isolated areas. State media reported it, so take the framing with a grain of salt. We found no court cases, allegations, fact-checks or scandals involving him.

So where do we land? He's a stable, low-drama career official with no harmful record we could find and no standout good deeds either. Mixed on the harm test only because the record is so thin, and he's now a former president anyway. Hard to cheer for, hard to boo.