Vietnam's leaders to talk policy online
HANOI - Communist Party leaders say they will have regular online chats with the public on corruption and other controversial issues, a first for Vietnam, which has embraced economic market reforms but maintained one-party rule.
The official English-language Vietnam News daily reported on Tuesday that the first online chat was scheduled for November with one or two sessions planned per month and eventually on a weekly basis.
"One-way information is no longer suitable," the report quoted Dao Duy Quat, chief editor of the party's online newspaper as saying. "We must make ideological work more persuasive on both ends to enhance socialist democracy in our society."
The report did not make clear whether online chats with the president, deputy prime ministers and ministry heads would be limited to the party's approximately 3.1 million members. Quat said people's concerns on all political, cultural, security and defence issues could be discussed.
Online chats have become popular in the Southeast Asian country, especially with actresses and singers and occasionally with a cabinet minister or government official.
The government imposes legal and technical controls to block access to writings and people on the Internet who challenge one-party rule, while itself using Web sites to promote its socio-economic policies and growing international ties.
Relatively few Vietnamese, about 16 percent of the country's 83 million population, have access to the Internet.
Newspapers are all state-controlled, but they compete with one another and increasingly run articles criticising government agencies and officials, particularly about corruption, bureaucracy and wastefulness, themes identified by the party.
The media played a major role in exposing a multi-million dollar corruption scandal that led to the ouster of a cabinet minister in April, but international rights groups say a law introduced in July placed further restrictions on media.
At the weekend, two small newspapers were suspended for a month for critical reporting of the central bank's printing of new polymer bank notes.
Reuters - October 24, 2006.
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