ASEAN Beat | Politics | Southeast Asia

Laos Replaces Prime Minister in Major Leadership Reshuffle

Saleumxay Kommasith, a former foreign minister and permanent representative to the UN, has been appointed to the top job.

Lao Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith meets with ASEAN Secretary-General Dr. Kao Kim Hourn on the sidelines of the 56th ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting and Related Meetings in Jakarta, Indonesia, July 12, 2023.

Laos’ National Assembly yesterday approved a major leadership change that included the removal of Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone.

In what the state-run Vientiane Times described as “a significant change in senior state leadership,” lawmakers yesterday voted unanimously to appoint Sonexay’s deputy Saleumxay Kommasith as the country’s new prime minister. Sonexay was appointed president of the National Assembly, succeeding the late Xaysomphone Phomvihane.

The position has been vacant since Xaysomphone, the son of revered communist leader Kaysone Phomvihane, died in August at the age of 70. The Central Committee of the ruling Lao People’s Revolutionary Party described his passing as “an immense loss for the Party, the State and the Lao people of all ethnic groups.”

According to the Laotian Times, 57-year-old Saleumxay has a background in diplomacy, having spent much of his career in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He has previously served as Laos’ representative to the United Nations and as foreign minister between 2016 and 2024, and was also appointed as a deputy prime minister in 2022.

Beyond the need to fill the vacant National Assembly position, Lao media reports were reticent about the reasons for Sonexay’s removal, and in Laos it is often hard to separate performance-based from patronage-based appointments. Nonetheless, the fact that he was kept on as prime minister at the last national congress of the LPRP in January, presumably with the expectation that he would serve for a full five-year term,........

© The Diplomat