Protest shows anger at local leadership
HANOI - Dozens of people demonstrated outside the Communist
Party headquarters in Hanoi yesterday in a rare public
display of discontent with their local leadership.
The gathering of about 30 included Buddhist monks and
elderly and handicapped people who had travelled to
Hanoi's Ba Dinh square from southern Dong Thap
province. They reportedly shouted slogans and unfurled
banners reading: "People from Sa Dec town, Dong
Thap, are depressed - no democracy."
Uniformed police prevented anyone from approaching
the demonstration, which plain-clothes police dispersed
after about an hour, apparently without making any
arrests.
The protest came as Vietnam's 170-member central
committee began a 10-day plenum to discuss economic
policies to be submitted to next year's Party Congress
which will chart Vietnam's course for the next five years.
Although the size of yesterday's demonstration was
unusual, small groups of farmers frequently come to
Hanoi with complaints, invariably about autocratic or
corrupt officials.
Tran Quoc Vuong, professor of Vietnamese history and
culture at Hanoi's National University, said the
behaviour of local officials in remote areas often
resembled that of leaders from the country's feudal past.
"Vietnam's administration still suffers a number of
weaknesses, not least of which is a pervasive
paternalism which remains very much a feature of
Vietnamese culture," he said.
"But the power of the central Government is weak and
it's often unaware or unable to effectively deal with the
autocracy and corruption which prevails in many rural
parts of the country."
Foreign diplomats said the leadership in Hanoi was
increasingly aware that the abuse of power by
local-level officials threatened its claim of popular
consensus as the basis of its legitimacy to rule.
"They moved very quickly to resolve the problems in
Thai Binh province," said one diplomat, referring to a
popular uprising against corrupt officials in the northern
province in 1997.
That uprising prompted a high-profile campaign to purge
the party's ranks of undesirable elements which last year
saw the dismissal of around 1,500 members including a
deputy prime minister. Another 1,100 officials and
businessmen appeared before the courts on
corruption-related charges.
But the sincerity and continued momentum of that
self-criticism campaign have been questioned even by
state-controlled newspapers, which pointed out that
despite endemic corruption only a very small number of
the party's two million members have been disciplined to
date.
By Huw Watkin - South China Morning Post - April 18, 2000.
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