Vo Van Kiet (23 November 1922-11 June 2008) was Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Vietnam from 10 March to 22 June 1988 (succeeding Pham Hung and preceding Do Muoi) and from 8 August 1991 to 24 September 1992 (succeeding Muoi), and then Prime Minister from 24 September 1992 to 24 September 1997 (succeeding Muoi and preceding Phan Van Kai).
Biography[]
Vo Van Kiet was born in Vinh Long Province, South Vietnam in 1922, and he joined the Indochinese Communist Party in 1939 and joined the Viet Minh insurrection in Cochinchina. He went on to fight in the First Indochina War, and he became a member of the Workers' Party of Vietnam Central Committee in 1960. In 1961, he became commander of communist forces in and around Saigon, and, in 1966, his wife and two children were killed in a US rocket attack. After the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, he became the head of the Communist Party of Vietnam's reformist wing, opposing the country's disastrous Stalinist economic policies. In 1988 and from 1991 to 1997, he served as Prime Minister of Vietnam, supporting further privatization of the state-dominated economy and democratization. He stepped down in 1997 due to increased factionalism, and he went on to openly support reconciliation with Vietnamese exiles and democracy activists. He died in 2008 at the age of 85.