~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

[Year 1997]
[Year 1998]
[Year 1999]
[Year 2000]
[Year 2001]
[Year 2002]

Vietnam starts key meeting with anti-graft mandate

HANOI - Vietnam's newest slate of elected representatives kicked off a twice-yearly session on Friday by vowing to respond to voter concerns about bribe-taking, hinting that more heads could roll in an anti-corruption drive.

The 498-member National Assembly, the country's highest legislative body, began its 20-day session amid a swirl of actions to clean house just ahead of the endorsement of a new cabinet nominated by the ruling Communist Party. "There is no last person in the battle against corruption," Nguyen Van An, chairman of the assembly, told reporters after two hours of opening speeches. "There always emerges someone, like the yellow leaves fall."

International donors and foreign investors have been pushing Vietnam to stamp out graft. The country began market reforms in the mid 1980s and is expected to get $1.2 billion in foreign investment this year to help meet ambitious development targets. On Monday, the party -- which controls about 90 percent of the assembly elected in May -- said it had dismissed two members of its powerful Central Committee for alleged links to an underworld kingpin currently awaiting trial. With a large gold bust of revolutionary idol Ho Chi Minh looming in the background, Party chief Nong Duc Manh told the assembly that corruption and bureaucracy were "threats to the survival of the regime".

The World Bank's country director Andrew Steer, who attended the assembly opening, told Reuters he sensed "a toughness" within the government to tackle problems. "I think it's a very healthy process."

Public rumblings

Even though it operates an opaque single-party system, Vietnam is signalling that it is sensitive to rumblings from its population of 79 million. For the first time in the assembly's 50 years of meetings, a voter wish list, gleaned from more than 2,500 meetings with 429,030 voters, was read out.

Voters said they welcomed the probe into organised crime, "but were concerned and displeased with police officers and state officials connected with this crime ring," Huynh Dam, general secretary of the Fatherland Front, the party's umbrella organisation, told the assembly. Voters urged the set-up of an anti-corruption panel.

Nguyen Lan Dung, an assembly delegate from the central highland province of Daklak, told reporters, "The corruption cases that have long been undiscovered are not those our people hadn't known about. That's because we just didn't listen to our people so the cases took so long to be revealed." Friday's comments came amid fresh disclosures of improper spending by government agencies. The state-controlled Viet Nam News reported on Friday that $11.4 million had been misspent on offices, new cars, state officials' mobile phone bills as well as "receptions and gifts".

But the assembly's opening session -- which was preceded by a traditional wreath laying at Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum -- yielded little about a cabinet reshuffle, expected to be announced early next month. Assembly chairman An declined comment to reporters on expectations the top level -- the prime minister, president and assembly chairman -- would be unchanged. As many as nine ministries, including the key trade post, could see new faces.

By Christina Toh-Pantin - Reuters - July 20, 2002.


Vietnam's parliament opens with pledge to get tough on graft

Vietnam's newly elected parliament convened with promises from Communist Party supremo Nong Duc Manh to strengthen the rule of law and eradicate rampant corruption. In his most hard-hitting speech since taking power at last year's party Congress, Manh told the 498-member National Assembly that legal reform was essential to political and economic development.

"Our legal system is still incomplete and inconsistent and its quality and effectiveness remains low and has not kept abreast with real life," the party secretary-general said. "It has failed to contribute to the speeding up of the industrialisation, modernisation and development of our Socialist market-oriented economy, nor has it managed to fully reflect the will and aspirations of the people."

Manh said the National Assembly -- often derided for being a rubber-stamp legislature -- was "the organ of the state's highest power" and must step up its vetting of all aspects of government and bureaucracy. Despite its lack of real power and political bite, many diplomats say the existence of the National Assembly, whose members were elected in one-horse May polls, is at least a starting point for reform.

"I believe Manh is working for the empowerment of the National Assembly, after all he was its former chairman," one Western diplomat said. "It's a good sign." Standing in front of a gold bust of the party's revered founding father, Ho Chi Minh, Manh also lamented the extent to which corruption had permeated the state apparatus and vowed to crack down hard on offenders.

"It is imperative that those who breach the law, especially those found guilty, be brought to trial no matter who they are and what position they hold," he told the deputies. Two senior members of the Communist Party's powerful Central Committee were expelled last week for their role in an explosive gangster scandal. More than 100 other officials have been arrested for their links with Nam Cam, the 55-year-old "Godfather" who amassed a fortune from his underworld activities in Ho Chi Minh City under the noses of the city's police force. Eradicating graft and restructuring the administrative organs of power are among the key components of a three-year World Bank- and IMF-assisted structural reform programme launched in 2001.

Earlier, the deputies, wearing an array of dark suits and traditional Vietnamese dresses or ao dai, filed sombrely past the embalmed body of Ho Chi Minh before entering the chamber. Topping the agenda during the first session of the 11th parliament, which is expected to sit for at least 20 days, is approving leadership changes decided by the Central Committee earlier this month. Speculation over who will be reshuffled has been rife since the two senior members were ousted from the secretive 150-strong committee over their links to Nam Cam.

Like Manh, whose position is impregnable, the two other members of Vietnam's troika of senior leaders -- Prime Minister Phan Van Khai and President Tran Duc Luong -- are expected to be confirmed for another term. However, up to nine government ministers are rumoured for the sack.

During his 30-minute speech, Manh also took a traditional swipe at critics of Vietnam's human rights record. "We reject all slanderous allegations of the hostile forces that distorted our democracy and human rights... and intervene in our internal affairs."

Agence France Presse - July 19, 2002.