A colourful prime minister goes, as the grey men stay

WHEN Great Grandfather, a revered turtle which had long paddled around Hanoi’s central lake, was found dead on the eve of the Communist Party’s five-yearly congress, many Vietnamese thought it a bad omen for the ruling party. The animal embodied a legend about a 15th-century Vietnamese warrior who presented his sword to a turtle after vanquishing the Chinese. Some wondered whether the party’s leaders, whose dusty Marxism-Leninism feels increasingly out of step with Vietnam’s youthful population of 93m, were also losing their edge.

As it happens, the congress, which concluded in pomp on January 28th, ended up backing an only slightly more sprightly reptile. After eight days of unusually fierce politicking, party bigwigs forced the charismatic and pro-business prime minister to leave government after his term expires in a few months. Nguyen Tan Dung had hoped to assume the top party post of general secretary. Instead Mr Dung, along with the state president, Truong Tan Sang, failed to get a seat on the party’s new Central Committee, while the septuagenarian incumbent, Nguyen Phu Trong, was asked to carry on as all-important party chief.

Given term limits and mandatory retirement ages, Mr Dung, who is 66, had every reason to be shown the door. Yet analysts thought he might win promotion to general secretary. His patronage network is extensive, and he enjoyed the support of business types backing a more open economy. Younger Vietnamese liked Mr Dung’s friendly stance towards America and his robust defence of Vietnam’s sovereignty in territorial disputes with China.

True, whiffs of corruption hung over him, and the bankruptcies of two state firms he championed were a blot. But many Vietnamese could accept these things. Despite the scandals, “he still improved Vietnam’s relations with America”, says Pham Khac Quang, a 33-year-old machine-parts distributor in Hanoi. Had he kept on doing that, all else “would have been forgiven”. In December Mr Dung defended his record in a nine-page memo to colleagues, later leaked to a political blog.

In the end an opposing party faction loosely grouped around Mr Trong gained the upper hand, in part through skilful management of voting procedures that baffle even some insiders. This group appears to have emphasised Mr Dung’s economic mishaps. His opponents almost certainly pointed out that his self-promotion and his anti-China populism were incompatible with the Communists’ preference for cautious, consensual rule. Some doubtless worried that his rise would undermine their own power.

As for Mr Trong, party chief since 2011, he is a colourless apparatchik in the twilight of his career. His support owes as much to Mr Dung’s divisiveness as to any personal merits; indeed, with the prime minister out of the picture Mr Trong may soon retire himself, to be replaced by a bland successor—a front-runner is the party’s propaganda chief, Dinh The Huynh. More interesting are the officials the congress appears to have chosen for other top jobs. Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan looks likely to become the first woman to chair the National Assembly; she understands economics and is broadly well-regarded. The probable new state president is Tran Dai Quang, the minister for public security. He would be a worrying choice, given the state’s tendency to lock up and occasionally torture dissidents. Human Rights Watch calls its record “dismal”.

The next prime minister is expected to be Nguyen Xuan Phuc, who is harder to read. As one of Mr Dung’s deputies he has worked to cut red tape, with the help of some American funding. A foreign businessman calls him a “straight shooter”. Yet Mr Phuc has demonstrated little of Mr Dung’s popularity or vim, and he probably cleaves closer to Mr Trong’s slightly more conservative views.

The new leaders may slow the pace of economic liberalisation, but they are unlikely to reverse it. Nor will relations with America be set back. It was Mr Trong, after all, who delighted in calling on President Barack Obama in Washington last summer—a big step in attempts to make Vietnam less vulnerable to Chinese bullying. A party plenum recently reaffirmed its support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an American-led trade deal which the incoming government will soon have to ratify. Meanwhile, bigwigs at the congress made encouraging noises about shrinking flabby state firms. Investors will welcome this sense of consistency, although the prime minister’s imminent departure has also dashed hopes that grander modernisations might be on the cards.

More radical changes may have to wait for the next congress, in 2021. Then a mass of Russian-speaking party members, brought up hating America, are due to retire. Their successors may well be Western-educated technocrats who understand that the party’s best hope of survival lies in making the economy more competitive, and in convincing young Vietnamese such as Mr Quang, the machine-parts distributor, that it has their interests at heart. For the moment, though, hammer-and-sickle banners cover the capital. And most people—like subjects in a 15th-century kingdom—have no say in who rules the roost.