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The Wrath of the People |
Ðằng Vân
Point of View
Week Ending 28 January 2007
It has been common knowledge, not only among the Vietnamese people, but also among the rank and file membership of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), that the one-party rule has created so much injustice, that the wrath of the people knows no bounds.
Despite much repression and threats, we have heard of numerous demonstrations by dispossessed peasants, disillusioned workers and outraged ex-members of the CPV itself. All these people were and theoretically are still the salt of the earth as far as the CPV is concerned.
If we read carefully article 4 of the 1992 constitution, these people and certain ideologies should be the raison d’ être of the one-party rule itself.
Let’s quote article 4 verbatim to understand this very point:
“The CPV, the vanguard of the Vietnamese proletariat, the loyal delegate of the working class, the working people and the whole nation, followers of Marxism-Leninism and the thoughts of Ho Chi Minh, is the force leading the government and the society”.
It seems abundantly clear, from the above article 4, that the constitution only allows the CPV to lead the government and the society, on the explicit and therefore mandatory requirements that:
1. It continues to represent loyally:
And
We should judicially note the use of the word “and”, instead of “or” in article 4.
By CPV’s own official statistics, we can show irrefutably that it has breached requirement (1) above. Indeed Vietnamnet on 29/01/07 published an article euphorically entitled “About 30% of Complaints and Denunciations are completely false”.
This article provided telling statistics:
There were a total of 129,164 complaints and denunciations, received in 2006 by the authorities (and one should understand that this is only the tip of the iceberg because only the most daring of citizens would dare to complain, and the real figure should be hundreds of times greater). Of these 110,072 were resolved. In a statistical compilation of a sample of 27,667 cases, 39% were justified, 38.1% unjustified and the remaining 22.9% partly justified and partly unjustified.
Most of the complaints related to land disputes. This is most revealing to a keen observer of Vietnamese politics. It seems that it is deliberate CPV policy to allow its senior members to appropriate themselves the most valuable national asset of all: land. Land was stolen from Vietnamese peasants in the countryside and from the Vietnamese workers in urban areas. We note with interest that the Marxist original concept of the proletariat (which referred only to industrial workers) had been re-interpreted by Mao-Tse-Tung to include Chinese peasants. This reinterpretation has been adopted by the CPV to apply to Vietnamese peasants as the rural proletariat. Thus by taking land from the Vietnamese peasants and urban workers, and indeed from the whole nation, the CPV and its members have lost the right to lead the government and the society, pursuant to article 4 of the constitution itself.
As far as requirement (2) is concerned, the CPV does not fare any better. To comply with this requirement it must follow 3 ideologies: Marxism, Leninism and the thoughts of Ho Chi Minh. Because of the cumulative exigencies of article 4, missing anyone of the 3 ideologies is not permissible. By officially adopting the market economy, it is clear the CPV no longer follows Marxism or Leninism. Now the CPV insists on following the thoughts of Ho Chi Minh. But what exactly are the thoughts of Ho can be any body’s guess. For one thing Ho prided himself as a man of action, not of thoughts. No doubt CPV leaders are scratching their collective heads very hard to find out what exactly these thoughts are.
However, even if they are finally successful in discovering, or inventing any Ho’s thoughts to follow, this is not sufficient to satisfy the cumulative demands of the word “and” in article 4. Thus the CPV will loose its right to lead the government and the society anyway.
As a result of this line of reasoning, from now on, any Le, Ly, Tran or Nguyen (the equivalents of any Tom, Dick or Harry in the English speaking nations) can set up a political party bearing the name of “Communist Party of Vietnam”, with a party constitution and explicit policies:
1. More loyal than the ruling CPV to:
2. More loyal than the ruling CPV to:
Then, on the basis of article 4, such Vietnamese Tom, Dick or Harry can march to the official residences of Nong Duc Manh, Nguyen Minh Triet and Nguyen Tan Dung and request them to hand over political power to the new “Communist Party of Vietnam”.
Such is the absurdity of article 4!
Despite the poverty engineered by decades of CPV misrule, and despite the severe restriction on freedom of expression by the regime, the Vietnamese people are still one of the most literate peoples of the world. Practically all of our people can read article 4 and realize how stupid it is. As a consequence, their wrath knows no bounds.
Ðằng Vân
29 January 2007