Ryan Nguyen

Ryan Nguyen (English pronunciation: /'njuːwən/  new -wən or /nwɪn/  nwin , born Ryan Nguyễn Quang Minh, 12 December 1988 – 4 October 2031) was a Craftian politician who served as the 15th Prime Minister of Craftia, from the 2031 federal election until his death 14 days later. He was the fourth Asian Craftian to hold the office following Alexander Lee, Bob Ching and Oliver Hen-Ji, and first (and currently only) of Vietnamese heritage. He was the fourth-youngest person to become Prime Minister, at age 42.

Entering Parliament at the 2025 election, aged just 27, Nguyen rapidly rose through the ranks of the Liberal Party, becoming a party frontbencher by the following election in 2028, before being promoted to party leader after the resignation of Ted Holmstrom following another poor election result for the Liberals.

Nguyen is credited with almost singlehandedly reviving the Liberal Party, following a decade without success and having stagnated with an apparent polling ceiling of 10%. The Liberal Party shifted towards a strongly social liberal stance while maintaining its ideology of economic liberalism, thus aligning the party towards the centre-left. Following Nguyen taking on the leadership, the Liberals steadily increased in popularity throughout the term of the 15th Parliament, taking the lead in the polls for the first time in Craftian history by the start of 2030.

With Nguyen's vigorous and energetic campaigning, the Liberal Party won a plurality of the vote for the first time with 35.27% and 42 of the 120 seats (still records for the Liberal Party today). Despite his youth and apparent inexperience, the Liberals were able to defeat the one-term Conservative Hunter Government, which had won a majority just three years prior. He was the first Liberal Prime Minister to be elected into government from opposition. However, the election and the fast pace of politics put a toll on Nguyen, and the stress as a party leader and his hard campaigning was seen as highly detrimental to his rapidly deteriorating health, having been diagnosed with cardiomyopathy in 2026. The Nguyen Government ended abruptly when he suffered a heart attack and went into cardiac arrest, shortly before dying on the driveway of Bankera House on the morning of 4 October 2031, just 14 days after being sworn in. The new parliament had sat just once in the House of Representatives.

Nguyen remains the second and most recent Prime Minister to die in office, the other being James Herbert. A coalition government agreement was renegotiated after Nguyen's death, as the National United Party refused to continue to provide confidence and supply to the governing Liberals under his successor Kevin Abbott. Nguyen was succeeded by his deputy (and leader of the NUP) William Crestson as Prime Minister, and Abbott as Leader of the Liberal Party, who would go on to be Prime Minister himself from 2040 to 2050 and would eventually implement many of Nguyen's proposed policies. His widowed wife Kassandra Jin succeeded him in his seat of Acton. Many of the Liberals' election campaigns during the 2030s and early 2040s were based around "Ryan's Legacy" as a tribute to Nguyen. Nguyen is still hailed as 'The Best Prime Minister Craftia Never Had', and his philosophy has had a profound effect on the present-day Liberal Party's ideology.