Huynh Tan Phat

Born 1913 in My Tho. Vietnamese political and state figure; an architect by profession.

Huynh Tan Phat graduated from the University of Hanoi. While still a student he joined the anticolonialist democratic movement, and in 1945 he took part in the August Revolution in Vietnam. From 1949 to 1954, during the war of resistance against the French imperialists (Indochina War), he directed the information service of the patriotic forces in South Vietnam and served as a member of the resistance committee of the Cho Lon District of Saigon. Huynh was arrested several times for his activities.

After the conclusion of the Geneva Agreements on Indochina in 1954, Huynh Tan Phat returned to Saigon and became one of the leaders of the mass struggle against the efforts of the pro-American regime in Saigon to sabotage the agreements. In 1959 he went to the liberated zone in South Vietnam to take a direct part in the liberation struggle of the South Vietnamese patriots. Huynh was elected general secretary of the Democratic Party of South Vietnam, and in December 1960 he became deputy chairman and general secretary of the Central Committee of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam.

In 1969, Huynh Tan Phat became the president of the newly created Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam, and after the creation of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in July 1976, he became deputy prime minister.