Thirty-one years after re-unification under Communist rule:
Vietnam at a crossroads:
choose a new path or spend the next 197 years trying to catch up with Singapore
The Vietnamese
Communist Party (VCP), one of the last few hold-outs of Communism of the
Stalinist era, has just gone through its Tenth Congress in
While it is a
privilege for the party’s 3 million members to attend the Congress, the other
80 million people of
According to Transparency
International, a non-profit organization dedicated to expose corruption around
the world, out of 159 countries assessed in 2005,
on “corruption
perception index”, in the same league with such countries as
The findings of
the Global Competitiveness Report, 2005-2006, published by the World
Economic Forum, show that
There are other
indicators which point to bothersome political, social, and business
environments, for example:
- Freedom of the press: 104th.
-
Irregular
payments in tax collection: 114th
-
Irregular
payments in exports and imports: 113th
-
Burden
of government regulation: 102nd
-
Irregular
payments in judicial decisions: 100th
The U.S. State
Department, in its report released on March 8, 2006 on human rights practices in
-
Inability
of citizens to change their government
-
Police
abuse of suspects during arrest, detention, and interrogation
-
Harsh
prison conditions
-
Arbitrary
detention or restriction of the movement of persons for peaceful expression of
political and religious views
-
Denial
of the right to fair and expeditious trials
-
Imprisonment
of persons for political and religious activities
-
Limited
privacy rights
-
Restrictions
on freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and association
-
Restrictions
on religious freedom
-
Restrictions
on freedom of movement
-
Limitations
on worker rights.
Given the above
situation, it’s no wonder why
The VCP’s Tenth
Congress was opened amid a major scandal involving a government agency -- the
notorious Project Management Unit 18 (PMU18) -- in which Transport Minister Dao
Dinh Binh resigned and his Deputy Nguyen Viet Tien was arrested for alleged
involvement in an embezzlement of some 7 million dollars in funds for roads and
bridges for use in a soccer betting ring.
In the meantime, the World Bank announced that it would investigate this
affair to determine whether any of its development funds allocated to
Just as the final preparations of the Congress
were being put together, a political bombshell exploded in
Despite
the danger of persecution and imprisonment by the Vietnamese Communist
authorities, for the fist time in Vietnam’s modern history, a group of citizens
felt compelled enough to dare challenge the party which has held maintained a
firm grip on power for over 60 years, ever since it stepped into the political
vacuum in Vietnam at the end of the Second World War to impose itself on the
Vietnamese people.
After
providing a succinct and accurate analysis of the political developments in
Vietnam since the advent of the Communist rule, Manifesto 2006
concludes that the Vietnamese people can only enjoy democracy and freedom if the
current political regime is changed in a fundamental way, from a monolithic,
one-party, non-competitive system to a pluralistic, multi-party system with
healthy competition in which there is a clear separation of powers among the
Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches of the government. Specifically, its authors call for the
restoration of the following fundamental rights to the Vietnamese people:
-
Freedom
of information and opinion;
-
Freedom
to assemble, form associations, political parties, vote, and stand for
election;
-
Freedom
to participate in independent labour unions and in legitimate strikes; and
-
Freedom
of religion.
Given
the pent-up frustrations of the majority of the Vietnamese population over the widespread curruption, the ever widening
gap between the rich Party elite and the poor masses, and the
Communists’continuing use of empty rhetoric to drum up their strategy of
running “a market economy with socialist orientation guided by Uncle Ho’s
thoughts”, Manifesto 2006 is seen inVietnam, and among the
members of its 3-million diaspora, as a ray of hope. It reminds people of Charter 77
which led to the Velvet Revolution and the demise of the Communist Party of
Czechoslovakia in 1989.
Who
knows, Manifesto 2006 may well lead to a Bamboo Revolution which
finally brings democracy and freedom to
Le
Duy Can is a former President of the Vietnamese Canadian Federation.
Readers are encouraged to sign the petitions in support of the 118 Vietnamese citizens, Manifesto 2006. Links in Vietnamese and English are at the right side of this page.
