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POLITICS-VIETNAM: PARTY IGNORES CALLS TO REEL IN CORRUPTION
(English IPS News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)by Tran Dinh Thanh Lam
HO CHI MINH CITY, Apr. 27, 2006 (IPS/GIN) -- Hopes that Vietnam's Communist Party would take aim at high-level corruption were dashed this week when the party sidestepped an opportunity to elect reform-minded candidates.
"Nothing new as usual," said Nguyen Van Minh as he disgustedly flung down his copy of the Tuoi Tre newspaper carrying the final results of the 10th National Party Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV).
Like many others, the 29-year-old software engineer had pinned much hope on the congress giving the CPV, as well as Vietnam, a chance to rejuvenate itself by tackling corruption.
The disgust was all the more because a respected politburo member, Phan Dien, had solemnly promised that the congress would be of "real substance" and would result in major reforms.
But the conservative way in which the congress was conducted -- voting by a show of hands for a list of pre-selected candidates -- ensured that the 10th congress was just as formal as the previous ones and gave reformists no chance at making change.
Minh had hoped that the congress would enact policies to combat rampant corruption that Dien had described at a press conference in Hanoi, held before the event, as "a threat to the entire political system."
Vietnam, which ranks among the world's poorest and most underdeveloped countries, has been rocked by a series of corruption scandals involving high-ranking Communist officials of leading sectors like petroleum, post and telecommunications, agriculture and commerce.
Delegate after delegate emphasized the urgent need to combat corruption; many even urged the CPV to take "strong measures" to stop it.
"They all repeated that the political system was under threat; but no one dared to ask for a thorough dissection so as to see what makes the system so vulnerable," the young white-collar worker Minh said.
"All they found necessary to include in their final resolutions is that the party would take strong measures and condemn cadres who abuse power for personal benefits and ask them to declare their properties, carry out self-criticism and criticism," Minh said. " The same refrain, as usual."
The few and small adjustments made to the post-congress political line - the state-run sector no longer has a key role and party members are allowed to do business -- do not meet public expectations.
In their "contribution to the CPV's draft political report" many people had expressed their hope to see democracy introduced so that it could spread into the whole society. They considered democracy a prerequisite for anti-corruption efforts.
But critics said the real problem was that the party considers itself above the state and was unwilling to change that status.
"There should be a law for the party," said Nguyen Van Tran, former secretary of the CPV Central Committee (CC). "The party is infringing on the (power of the) state. That is the very error of the present political system."
A case in point, said Tran, was that of the tainted transport minister Dao Dinh Binh refusing to submit to the National Assembly, saying he was a member of the CC and would be responsible only to that body. Binh has come under pressure to take responsibility in a corruption case involving top ranking transport officials.
Early this year, Bui Tien Dung, the director of the Project Management Unit 18 (PMU 18) under the transport ministry, was caught diverting $2 million meant for infrastructure projects to placing bets on English and Spanish premier league football matches.
Digging into projects concerning highways, bridges and other infrastructure by PMU 18, police unearthed evidence that Dung and his accomplices had skimmed off public funds, taken kickbacks from lucrative state contracts and used official cars as gifts for business contacts.
The scandal forced minister Binh to resign. His deputy Nguyen Viet Tien was arrested. Both saw their names removed from the list of candidates for the coming CC.
Writing in the Tuoi Tre, leading economist Le Dang Doanh said: "The PMU 18 scandal raises many serious questions about the political system and the way it works."
Before the congress, some veteran communist leaders including Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, Gen. Chu Huy Man, and former CPV general secretary Le Kha Phieu petitioned the police demanding full investigation of the PMU 18 case even if it led to the highest levels.
But congress delegates only vaguely promised to "draw lessons" from it.
"They all took a strange air of impassivity," remarked Le Hung Anh, a veteran of the anti-colonial war.
Anh said people like him who had hoped that the CPV would become more determined to fight corruption were very disappointed.
"Nothing has been done. The case has been silenced. No delegate dares to question the responsibility of top officials, and how these (corrupted) officials manage to be nominated as candidates for the congress," said Nguyen Dang Dung, 72, a veteran communist, now retired and living in Ho Chi Minh City. "Delegates concurred that corruption should be fought, but could not say how."
A city lawyer who spoke to IPS on condition of anonymity said: "The biggest lesson that the 10th congress should draw is that corruption, waste and wrongdoing will grow as long as there is no transparency regulated by a democratic legislature."
But the word democracy used by the lawyer is different from the notion of "centralized democracy" followed by the CPV.
Commerce Minister Truong Dinh Tuyen, who retired after the congress, says there is an implicit contradiction between the two concepts -- centralization and democracy.
Deputy Chief of the Central Inspectorate Vu Quoc Hung identified five ways of using money to buy influence within the party. Cadres, he said, could pay to obtain more power, to land a higher post, obtain a diploma (needed for a higher post), evade a law suit or dilute a verdict.
'The party should wipe out all these forms of corruption if it wants to maintain credibility," he said.
An official at the Ministry of Planning and Investment confessed to local reporters that the PMU 18 case would have an "unprecedented and terrible impact" on relations between Vietnam and the donors.
The World Bank (WB) and Japan, the two donors that have some of their development aid funding infrastructure projects managed by the PMU 18, have already expressed their concern about good governance in Vietnam.
All donors said they wanted to see Vietnam more resolute in fighting corruption, thus preventing aid money being siphoned away by corrupt officials.
In a bid to pacify them, the ministry has hurriedly drafted regulation to restructure project management units to more efficiently control the billions of dollars of aid that floods into the country each year.
But most people regard such efforts as "eyewash" given that the congress let slip an opportunity that might have ensured corruption was firmly and effectively rooted out.
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