Vietnam Revisited

It is over 30 years since the end of the Vietnam War. Looking at the way the country has developed, without the enforced assistance of ‘liberators’, any logical explanation for the grief visited on all parties in the attempt to stop self determination is further away than ever.

Of course there were lessons to be learned, but that is proving to be a forlorn hope as the same ‘liberators’ race off to free another culture from the latest evil grip.

At the time the justification was the ‘domino effect’. That is, if Vietnam fell to the communists then other countries throughout South East Asia would fall one by one.

History has proved that concept nonsense. Along with China, Cuba, North Korea and Laos, Vietnam is just one of five communist states left. Like china, the country has successfully transformed to a market economy, even to the extent of negotiating trade deals with the US and looking to become a member of the World Trade Organisation.

To be sure, under the communist banner, Vietnam does not have free and fair, democratic elections – one is tempted to add – unlike the US presidential elections.

But their one party congress, which selects the leadership, is not beyond scrutiny and criticism.

The tenth congress of the Vietnam Communist Party

The party congress, underway this week and held under a cloud of corruption scandal, is set to challenge the current leadership.

In good old political speak: “the congress will discuss the building and rectification of the party in order to enhance the capacity and strength of the party; the making of the party pragmatically transparent and strong in political, ideological, and organisational terms; and the tightening of the party’s ties with people.”

In reality the current leadership, regardless of the strides the country has made in recent years, know their days are numbered.

CPV Secretary-General Nong Duc Manh has been quoted as saying: "degradation in the political ideology, ethics, and lifestyle, opportunism, individualism, bureaucracy, corruption and waste of a segment of officials and functionaries have been serious." Serious enough to undermine the future of the party itself.

The most serious of recent corruption scandals, raging through the country’s transport ministry and leading to the resignation of its minister, has become a profound trigger for change.

The revelation of the weaknesses of the current system has emboldened those ready to push for democratization.

Earlier this month a group of Vietnamese inside the country put their names to a document calling for an end to the CPV's grip on power and for political and civil rights to be respected and upheld.

The 116 signatories, including teachers, engineers and priests, said all of Vietnam's problems; a long list included corruption, abuse, backwardness, authoritarianism, hopelessness among youth and manipulation of religion, stemmed from "the same origin," the communist party's monopoly on power.

No doubt it is a fallacy to hold democracy up as a sure cure for any or all those ills. Any western democracy could produce a similar list of failings.

Still, the very success of the modified ‘communist’ agenda must eventually lead to a more open and pluralistic political system. Paternalistic government might have had a sound place in building the fortunes of Vietnam, but the cost of that is surely a more confident and self aware population.

Communism, like so called democracy, cannot be an end in itself. Political leadership should be a continual process of renewal and revision, and not just in Vietnam but in our Western democracies as well.

Have a look at the Communist Party of Vietnam on the web.