VIETNAM: Communists at the Crossroads

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Tran Dinh Thanh Lam

HO CHI MINH CITY, Mar 31 2006 (IPS) - With the policy-making, tenth National Party Congress looming up in mid-April, communist leaders are burying their differences to formulate a plan capable of lifting this country out of underdevelopment while ensuring that the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) retains full control.

Convened every five years, the congress elects top party leaders in the central committee and politburo, and fills top government jobs starting with those of president, prime minister and national assembly chairman.

The congress, scheduled for Apr. 18-25, is taking place at a time when Vietnam is negotiating membership in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and making efforts to integrate better with the global economy.

Vietnam is also preparing to host a summit of the ten-nation ASEAN regional bloc, which includes economic successes such as Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia. Other members are the Indonesia, the Philippines, Brunei, Laos, Cambodia and Burma.

Members of the CPV central committee and politburo are divided into two camps. Although all agree that economic restructuring is the way forward, some favour China’s formula of an open economy run by a tight political dictatorship while the others think that a market economy in a more democratic setting will deliver the goods.

The divergence has been serious enough for the central committee to put the issue before the people and ask them to contribute ideas to a draft political report that will be presented to the congress.

Since February, high-ranking officials, cadres, revolution veterans, intellectuals, students, and overseas Vietnamese have been heartily responding to generate more than 1,500 ‘ideas’. Some of them have even been published in the official newspapers and on official Internet sites.

The central committee will incorporate these ideas into a 22-page political report, that may help the congress draw up sound policies and measures capable of pulling the country out of a morass of underdevelopment and corruption.

Despite the achievements of the last five years, seen in the 7.5 percent annual GDP growth rate and commendable progress in hunger and poverty eradication, Vietnam remains one of the world’s poorest countries, notorious for its red tape, corruption and transparency deficit.

To address these problems, the CPV draft report suggests that in the next five years there should be efforts to “improve the party’s leadership capacity and fighting spirit; develop the strength of the whole nation and accelerate the reform process”. The goal should be to lift the country out of the underdeveloped group and create the foundations for ”an industrialised nation by 2020”.

Respondents suggested different ways to improve CPV’s leadership and accelerate the reform process. Some have been bold enough to question the legitimacy of CPV leadership and the rationality of “socialism with market orientation”.

In an article published in the “Nhan Dan”, the CPV organ, former politburo member and leading theorist Nguyen Van Binh says the weakness of the current CPV leadership results from its divergence from ‘Marxism-Leninism’. Top party leaders have lost their revolutionary spirit and communist vision, he said.

Binh said, instead of promoting the state-owned economic sector, the current CPV leadership had encouraged the private enterprise to develop. Worse, it planned to allow party cadres to set up their own businesses.

Binh reaffirmed that in order to carry out its “historic mission”, the CPV should ”firmly follow the path of Marxism-Leninism and remain the pioneering force of the working class”. “Communist cadres should not become capitalists.”

Not many communists support Binh. Conservative arguments are rapidly lost under a host of progressive comments, some urging the CPV to push the “doi moi” (restructuring) process to a higher level. Some have proposed that the CPV abandon socialism as a stumbling block to development.

Nguyen Trung, a member of the prime minister’s external economic task force and former ambassador to Thailand and Australia, believes the CPV should renovate itself first. “This is a golden chance for the CPV,” Trung stressed in a published commentary.

Trung has charged the leadership with “intellect and virtue deficiency in comparison to the party’s mission of taking our people on the path to rejuvenating our nation.”

“Red tape, corruption and negativity are the most obvious signs of our party’s current deficiency of virtue,” Trung wrote, calling on the congress to have the courage to “face the truth” and introduce more democratic practices within the party.

Many observers, concurring with Trung, have urged CPV leaders to be more dynamic and creative. They remark that there is nothing new in the CPV draft report and, as usual, fails to present concrete measures to solve the basic problems of corruption, red tapism and backwardness.

Says Phan The Hai, former economics correspondent for the Vietnam Economics News magazine: “To be frank, I had hoped very much to see changes. The title of the report used the phrase, ‘totally boosting the innovation plan,’ implying breadth and depth in both the ideological system and the approach to leadership”. But, he said, the terms used were ”too big” and did not correspond with what is in the draft report.

Phrases like “socialism oriented towards market economy” and “centralised (or socialist) democracy” abound in the draft , inviting observations such as ‘vague’ and ‘contradictory’.

Le Hong Ha, a former high-ranking CPV member remarks that terms like “building a socialist country with market orientation” did not make sense simply because ‘’the country is in reality neither socialist nor market oriented”.

One word that recurs in the ideas contributed to the CPV draft is ‘democracy’.

The word also appears in several articles written by former prime minister VoVan Kiet who charges the CPV with undemocratic practices and diverging from the late Ho Chi Minh’s ideal of building Vietnam into a democratic country. He recalled that Vietnam was first named ‘Democratic Republic of Vietnam’ before it was changed to ‘Socialist Republic of Vietnam’.

Many suggested that the CPV consider the reality of Marxism-Leninism in today’s world. “Marxism-Leninism is like a dying torch, and it’s illogical to use that dying torch to guide our country,” said Dang Van Viet, a legendary hero of the war.

HCM City lawyer Le Cong Dinh argues: “If openness has resulted in sensational economic developments, why not apply it to politics? It’s time to realise political openness.”

Observers notice that compared to subversive ideas advanced by political dissidents (such as abolishing Article 4 in the constitution that gives total leadership to the CPV), the ideas contributed to the CPV were, in general, timid, reserved and reasonable so as to encourage the ‘doi moi’ line.

But pessimists point out that, in the past, the CPV had many times asked for public advice but never taken it into account. “It’s just a propaganda game. Nothing will happen as long as the CPV is the one that owns truth,” comments writer Tran Manh Hao, a former party member.

Some observers recalled that in 1956, the CPV had encouraged public criticism of the party only to end it abruptly, repressing free speech and turning conservative.

Others were suspicious of the presence of a delegation of the Communist Party of China (CPC) at preliminary meetings. This was seen as a sign that the CPV was tending towards a political hard-line. In the past, the CPC sent delegates to CPV pre-congress meetings to support its own favourites.

On the other hand, a positive interpretation is being given to recent comments made by the United States ambassador, on the progress on human rights in Vietnam, as giving a fillip to “doi moi” leaders.

The die is cast. The tenth Congress will decide which way Vietnam will now head.