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

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Vietnam readies for change of guard as party congress nears end

HANOI - Vietnam's ruling communist party is set to chose new leaders tasked with speeding up the country's economic modernisation, as its five-yearly national congress neared an end. A change of the guard was expected in the revolutionary party that has ruled Vietnam since the end of the war in 1975 and is now seeking to turn Southeast Asia's fastest growing economy into an industrialised nation by 2020.

Two leaders who hail from Vietnam's booming industrial south were tipped to move up in the party's powerful politburo and be confirmed as prime minister and president by the national assembly in the coming months. For continuity, party chief Nong Duc Manh, 65, chosen in 2001 as a consensus-builder between reformers and hardliners, is expected to stay on, weathering the storm of a major corruption scandal, say analysts.

The party's nearly 1,200 delegates -- representing 3.1 million members in a country of 83 million people -- cast their ballots Sunday in Hanoi's Ba Dinh Hall, decorated with hammer and sickle symbols and a bust of Ho Chi Minh. They voted for an expanded Central Committee with 185 members, which was due to choose a new 17-member politburo Monday and formally elect the general secretary.

Prime Minister Phan Van Khai, 72, has long been tipped to bow out, and President Tran Duc Luong, a 69-year-old trained geologist, is formally out of the race, having withdrawn his Central Committee candidacy. The frontrunner for the premier's job is Khai's first deputy, 56-year-old Nguyen Tan Dung, who has been groomed for the post for years. Dung has extensive ties within the party, military and security apparatus but also financial experience as a former head of the state bank. "All his predecessors had degrees from the Soviet Union, so we'd finally get a PM who knows more about market economics than all of them," said Vietnam expert Carl Thayer of the Australian Defence Force Academy. "He was an understudy who has performed very competently in his position and would lend continuity to that office."

Fellow southerner Nguyen Minh Triet, 64, number four in the outgoing politburo and the party chief in Vietnam's commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City, was seen as the top contender for the president's post. A trained mathematician and former labour activist, he hails from a region near the former Saigon that has attracted major foreign investment. As city party chief, he has been popular with the business community.

If Triet wins the presidency, Thayer said, Vietnam will have gone from having a trained geologist as president "to a person who has very strong credentials with Vietnam's integration with the outside world." "That would be a powerful symbol of what the congress has set as its goal, to industrialise and modernise Vietnam," he said. Vietnam, which posted 8.4 percent economic growth last year, is seeking to join the World Trade Organisation before November, when it hosts its largest ever international event, an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

In other party changes, National Assembly Chairman Nguyen Van An and three more politburo members as well as another deputy prime minister, Vu Khoan, 69, all declined to seek new Central Committee candidacies. The congress has been held amid a graft scandal in a transport ministry road building unit, where officials embezzled millions of dollars, and the party has responded to public anger with much self-criticism during the eight-day event.

The 76-year-old Communist Party has also been subject to stronger than usual demands for internal democracy and transparency from an increasingly vocal press and prominent critics including 94-year-old military hero General Vo Nguyen Giap.

Agence France Presse - April 24, 2006.


Ruling Vietnam communists debate change, leaders

HANOI - Vietnam's Communist Party on Sunday elected officials to choose a new leadership it hopes will quicken the pace of economic change and fight chronic corruption. Twenty years of market reforms have increased overall wealth in the Southeast Asian country, but the party needs to keep up with changes in society, people inside and outside of this week's five-yearly National Party Congress said.

"The reality of life with shortcomings in the political system requires us to look at the staff of the leadership," Trade Minister Truong Dinh Tuyen said in a speech to the Hanoi Congress, which opened on April 18 and ends on April 25. Another delegate, National Assembly member Vu Mao, said much had been achieved "but the people desire a continuous renewal". Some delegates called for less party "interference" in some grass-roots organizations of the one-party system, but no one has publicly suggested a change to a multi-party format.

Hammer and sickle red flags decorating Hanoi recalled days when the Soviet Union lent political and economic backing. But now Hanoi looks to Washington, its enemy in a war that devastated the country in the 1960s and 1970s, for help in joining the World Trade Organisation -- a key step for future growth. The congress heard speeches decrying corruption as "a threat to the survival of our regime", partly reaction to public anger over a multi-million dollar bribery and football betting scandal. Three weeks ago, the transport minister quit and his deputy was arrested in a probe of officials in a big budget road and bridge building agency who stole money, including foreign aid. The Party has 3.1 million members in the 83 million population. It said 40,000 members had been "disciplined" -- some for corruption -- in the past five years.

Party votes

Delegates on Sunday voted for the 160-member Central Committee, which on Monday will elect a Politburo of 15 to 17. The voting was closed to most media, but it was broadcast on closed-circuit TV in a press centre. Delegates placed their large white ballots in several glass boxes. The Party, one of the few ruling communist governments, will count the ballots on Sunday night. The new Central Committee will decide who among Party General Secretary Nong Duc Manh, 65, President Tran Duc Luong, 69, and Prime Minister Phan Van Khai, 72, keep their jobs until 2010.

For the first time, the 1,176 delegates were allowed to recommend any of the Central Committee members for General Secretary, previously decided by the elite Politburo alone. Whoever takes top posts in the next two days will need to focus on the changing demands of Vietnam's young population. About half of Vietnamese are under 30, born after the U.S. war, and more are working, making money and travelling as economic growth increases. Gross domestic product was 8.4 percent in 2005, one of the fastest expanding economies after China. Vietnam has shed its previous aura of isolation from the war decades. Tourism and foreign investment are booming.

"With all this exposure to the world, the Party has to be more responsive to the changing nature of society," said political analyst Martin Gainsborough, director of a Vietnam project at the University of Bristol, England. "However, it is not totally un-responsive to those demands." On Saturday, thousands of admiring students in Hanoi gave a striking display of their ambitions and hopes during a visit by Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Some asked him about Vietnam's fledgling technology sector, his advice and keys to success.

"If I could speak to him I would tell him that I want to be even more successful than he is," said Nguyen Trung Dung, 19, one of thousands who were unable to join a meeting with Gates. The Party made sustained development the number one Congress priority, including building a "knowledge-based" economy. Vietnam wants to be a middle-income country by 2020. Per capita annual income is only $640 but could reach $1,100 in five years, officials said.

Reuters - April 23, 2006.