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.