ATO - Rituals of renewal in Vietnam By David Brown

Southeast Asia      Jan 7, 2011

Rituals of renewal in Vietnam By David Brown Vietnam's political elite will meet on January 11 to renew the leadership and reassert the legitimacy of the nation's ruling Communist Party (CPV). Public statements will project continuity and competence; policy adjustments will be incremental at best. The CPV is the only party allowed in this nation of 87 million and thus monopolizes the political process. Its 10-day congresses, convened every five years, are events vital to the cohesion and perceived legitimacy of the regime. They are the climax to months of lower-level jockeying and substantial public debate that has been followed attentively not only by outsiders with a stake in Vietnam's stability or economic success, but also by the 84 million Vietnamese who are not party members. The quinquennial rites are only superficially about policy. Chiefly they concern people and patronage: who goes up, who goes down, and how that ripples through the system. It is not a winner-take-all event, but rather one aimed at updating the CPV's internal balance among factions and interests while retiring former leaders bloodlessly. CPV factions, informal mutual-assistance groups of patrons and proteges, only incidentally reflect ideology or stand for this policy or that. A senior CPV member's beliefs about which policies ought to be emphasized are to a very large degree situational - that is, they follow predictably from where he stands in the structure and how he analyzes his career self-interest. A new central committee will be elected by the congress, the result of a year of alliance-mending and horse-trading. About half of its 180-odd members (including alternates) will be new faces, 50 or 55 year-olds who will replace those who have reached retirement age (generally 65) or who, less often, have been dropped as a consequence of misbehavior or conspicuous failure in their public roles. Immediately after the central party congress adjourns, the reconstituted central committee will convene to elect the members of the party's political committee, or politburo, currently 14 in number, from among its ranks. From politburo members who have already served a five-year term, the central committee will select the nation's troika of top leaders: party secretary general, president and prime minister. Though great care will be taken to portray this to the nation and outside world as an orderly process, it has not always been as highly scripted as it might seem. However, unofficial sources claimed in mid-December that consensus has already been reached on nominations to top positions. Unless there's an unprecedented rebellion by new members of the central committee, it's said that incumbent Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung will keep his job for another five-year term, though he has come under fire for missteps in economic management. The current chairman of the National Assembly, Nguyen Phu Trong, is tipped to become CPV secretary general, succeeding Nong Duc Manh, who has reached retirement age. Finally, Manh appears to have engineered the selection of his deputy in the CPV secretariat, Truong Tan Sang, as the nation's next president, who is expected to replace the ailing Nguyen Minh Triet. A few months later, the 493 members of the National Assembly will be elected or re-elected. The selection of those invited to stand for election is, like the selection of delegates to the CPV congress, driven by the objective of broad representation of functional and geographical interests. Once the lists of candidates are published, the rest is ritual: over 90% of the candidates will be CPV members, not more than a handful will face opposition, and provinces will vie to report voter turnout percentages in the high 90s. The first task of the new legislature will be to approve a new cabinet, and with that, the renewal process will be complete. Almost as important as internal renewal to the CPV's health are the signals it gives to indicate that the nation's business is under good and firm management. Thus the party takes care to project the impression that its internal deliberations are collegial and based on a national consensus about where Vietnam is headed and how it will get there. The party bases its monopoly of power on its leadership of Vietnam's fight for national independence many decades ago and its present ability to deliver social stability and economic growth. Like every Marxist-Leninist regime, it claims to have such a profound understanding of historical forces that it would be highly dangerous to let any non-communists to help drive the country. How firmly party members believe this can only be guessed, but it's evident that the vast majority of the population is for now content to pursue other objectives, including trying to get rich. Sustaining this status quo thus depends intimately on two conditions: continued fast economic growth and public perception that there is no feasible or desirable alternative to single party rule. Choreographed consultations The build-up to each National Party Congress is a choreographed sequence of local party unit discussions, consultations with "the people", and media reportage featuring policy advocacy and "popular aspirations". Though a torrent of white noise still blares from government media, the several months before each congress have become a time of actual, free-form public debate, framed and cheered on by the nation's livelier newspapers and a vibrant blogosphere. Many citizens (including retired party members) take the opportunity to deplore corruption and regret mismanagement, injustice, waste and environmental depredations. The proposals that get into print are sincere, sometimes naive, and invariably constructive - really deviant opinions are filtered out by a press that knows just how far it can push the envelope. Members of the National Assembly get in their own well-chosen licks. Most of the assembly's members are themselves senior party members, and thus the concerns they raise and the government's responses are regarded as a weathervane. When the current assembly met in November for its last session, many members were eager to condemn the Dung administration's failures to control inflation, prevent electric power cuts, or hold state-owned enterprises accountable for their failures. Shortly before a party congress, documents that have been prepared for it - in particular a political report and a 10-year socioeconomic strategy - are redrafted, ostensibly to reflect the trend of all the opinions expressed up to that point. Academics and diplomats scrutinize them for evidence of policy shifts but this is an exercise of dubious utility, as Bristol University scholar Martin Gainsborough points out in his remarkable new book Vietnam: Rethinking the State. Like party platforms in democracies, the political report and the strategy aim to appeal to all and offend none - thus they become thoroughly homogenized in the process of drafting by what is, in effect, a committee of the entire political elite. This doesn't mean that all the comment thus far and the debates that may take place behind the closed doors of the January 11-19 party congress are simply ritual; it only means that it's difficult to say what it will all lead to. The process results in the selection of a hierarchy of party leaders empowered to make decisions and provides them strong hints as to the mood of both party members and the public. It doesn't commit them to any particular course. The new team will inherit plenty of policy challenges: How can the party recruit a broad base of smart and idealistic members in an era when an apolitical career in the private sector promises substantial rewards? Can it come up with something more inspiring than the ‘emulate the virtues of Ho Chi Minh' campaign? How much criticism will be leveled at shortfalls in the government's delivery of services, and how much complaint about endemic corruption? Prime Minister Dung made little headway against either during his first term. Will a backlash be evident against globalization, the central thrust of policy for the past decade, and will there be loud grumbling about the prevalence of "social evils" under "market socialism"? Inevitably, some industries are finding it hard to compete, the rising tide has not lifted all boats, and even government economists are worried that Vietnam may get caught in a middle income trap, eternally dependent on low wage, labor-intensive factory jobs to feed a growing population. Where is industrial policy headed - i.e. will there be more space for the private sector to develop, and narrowed scope for state-owned enterprises? The recent near collapse of a high-profile national shipbuilding firm notwithstanding, SOEs seem destined to be reconfirmed as "an important tool for the implementation of policies". Macroeconomic management has been this year's biggest headache for the government. It's been accused of "ad hoc-ery" and seen its credit rating cut. Cash flows are problematic - development assistance has peaked, remittances from overseas Vietnamese are going under mattresses or into real estate, not into the banking system, and foreign direct investment is down in both quality and quantity. The national currency continues to lose value, compromising Vietnam's ability to service debts. In this environment, are the 7%-plus annual economic growth targets contained in the political report reasonable? Will the party's hard line against "the threat of pluralism" and East European-like "color revolutions" soften even a little bit? When the dust settles from the 11th congress, will the new leaders curb party Neanderthals - chiefly in the internal security agencies - who seem determined to jail everyone who colors outside the lines? Foreign policy typically is a minor concern of party congresses. Still, the current effort to manage relations with a rising, territorially and economically pushy China, in part by building up military ties with the US and other extra-regional countries, worries members who consider it folly to provoke the colossus to Vietnam's north. To the chagrin of diehards in the Vietnamese diaspora and radical idealists inside Vietnam, there are no indications of impending upheaval. Prospects are good for a smooth handover to a new set of leaders intent on sustaining the country's rapid economic modernization and the party's tight grip on the levers of power. Whether they can achieve both objectives, however, is another matter entirely. David Brown is a retired American diplomat who writes on contemporary Vietnam. He may be reached atnworbd@gmail.com.