New legislature to gather on July 20 Vietnam’s new National Assembly (NA) is expected to hold its first session on July 20, with the major focus being on electing a new leadership for the legislative body, the State, and the government.   The first session will likely last for ten days and end on July 30, with voting for a new NA Chairman, State President and Prime Minister, according to Mr. Nguyen Hanh Phuc, General Secretary of the NA. This will be the 14th tenure of the NA following the May elections, with 496 delegates. Some 160 delegates were re-elected. The current Chairwoman of the NA is Ms. Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, while the State President is Mr. Tran Dai Quang and the Prime Minister Mr. Nguyen Xuan Phuc. Ms. Ngan was previously Vice Chairwoman, Mr. Quang was Minister of Public Security, and Mr. Phuc was a Deputy Prime Minister. The new NA will also discuss the socioeconomic development plan in 2016 and other key issues such as public expenditure and the management of foreign loans. The NA is proposing the government to provide reports on the marine environment to delegates. Votes were cast on May 22 to elect 500 members of the new NA, 3,918 provincial councilors, 24,993 district councilors, and 294,055 commune councilors for the 2016-2021 tenure. Of the 870 NA candidates, 496 were elected, four short of the 500-seat plan, according to the National Election Council (NEC). The election results show that voters opted for younger officials, with 71 candidates under 40 years of age securing a seat in the legislative body, a 9.1 per cent increase from the last term. Over 60 per cent of elected NA delegates have a Master’s degree or higher and over a third have a university degree, while 1.2 per cent, or six delegates, have no tertiary qualifications. There are 133 female NA delegates, accounting for 26.8 per cent, while the target was at least 30 per cent. The number of non-Party NA delegates for the 14th tenure is 21, or 4.2 per cent of elected delegates and half the number in the 13th tenure, meaning 96 per cent of delegates are members of the Communist Party of Vietnam. Eighty-six delegates are ethnic minorities, equal to 17.3 per cent, while 182 were centrally-nominated candidates, or 36.7 per cent and 15 less than planned. Only two self-nominated candidates made the cut, while last term there were four. The two this time around are Mr. Nguyen Anh Tri, Director of the National Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusion, and Mr. Pham Quang Dung, Chairman of the Tasco JSC. Seventeen new delegates are businesspeople, including Chairman of VietinBank Mr. Nguyen Van Thang, Chairwoman of TNG Holdings Vietnam Ms. Nguyen Thi Nguyet Huong, Deputy CEO of Becamex IDC Mr. Nguyen Van Danh, and Chairman of PetroVietnam Mr. Nguyen Quoc Khanh. VN Economic Times