Looking ahead: Laos in 2020 and beyond

[Extract] The next Party National Congress of the ruling Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) is scheduled for early next year and, through this process, new leaders and a new politburo will be elected. While a cloak of secrecy makes it is extremely difficult to predict what specific changes the Congress will bring, well-informed reports from inside Laos suggest that some new, relatively young and well-educated figures, are destined for Senior party positions. In my summary of Laos and its political trajectory over the past 12 months, I seek to capture how constraints on freedom of expression have expanded alongside dynamic economic growth.