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Civil Society: a basic requirement for democracy |
Point of View
Week Ending 28 May 2006
When democracy fighters (especially those inside Vietnam), at considerable risk to their personal safety and well-being, call on the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) to abolish article 4 of the current constitution, their aim is not merely restricted to wresting monopoly control of the machinery of state (or government) from the CPV. More importantly their aim is to free civil society from control by the CPV.
For ease of reference, the said article 4 reads:
”The Communist Party of Vietnam, 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, constitute the leading force of the state and the society. All party organizations operate within the constitution and the law.”
In the context of the current constitution the word “state” must be understood as the machinery of government, and the word “society” must be understood as “civil society”.
An analysis of the wording of article 4 shows that the dictatorship of the CPV over the Vietnamese nation is much tighter and more totalitarian than any other dictatorship in human history because, at the outset, it has sought to dominate and control absolutely both the state and civil society.
The dictatorship of the CPV is certainly more absolute than that of the military junta in Burma, the ayatollahs in Iran and even the infamous Hitler of the Third Reich.
As a consequence, for Vietnamese democracy fighters, besides the need to wrest control of the state from the CPV and give it back to the people, the liberation of civil society from the rule of the CPV is a sine qua non condition for a real and enduring democracy in Vietnam.
We all know what the machinery of state or government is. It consists of institutions that govern the nation such as the executive (president, prime minister, cabinet, various government departments, the army, the security forces etc…), the legislative (the congress) and the judiciary (judges, courts, tribunals).
But more novel and elusive to the average Vietnamese is the concept of civil society.
So what is civil society?
Why is it so important to real democracy?
In short it comprises all legal entities and elements of the nation other than the state. Private financial institutions (banks, credit unions…), charity organizations, religious organizations, women’s rights, associations, gay rights groups and all other non-government organizations, including political parties, private media and a free press, belong to civil society.
In a nation, under the rule of law, the state and all legal entities within civil society, have equal legal standing before a properly constituted court of law. The state is reduced to being merely a legal entity, among others, under the law. Thus if an individual or a private organization is wronged by the state, such individual or organization can take legal action against the state. If the court finds in favor of the individual or organization, then, the state, like any other legal entity, will have no alternative but to pay the penalties imposed by the court of law.
In my opinion, not only is a healthy civil society a prudent counter-weight to state power, in order to protect democracy. I believe further that in an ideal democracy, civil society should be allowed to grow to its full potential, while state power should be restricted to a minimum. Thus in an ideal democracy, the machinery of state will be barely felt by individual citizens. They only feel such power when there is significant dysfunction among legal entities that need intervention and mediation by state power, or only when national sovereignty is at stake, such as in the case of foreign invasion or internal armed conflicts.
It goes without saying that when state power is maximized and civil society is reduced to a minimum that dictatorship prevails. This is indeed the current situation in Vietnam: in the last few days we saw the harassment by CPV security forces of engineer Nguyen Phuong Anh for merely invoking the concept of freedom to form an alternative political party to be called the Bach Viet Party, Professor Tran Khue, writer Hoang Tien, lawyer Nguyen Van Dai , Professor Hoang Minh Chinh, colonel Tran Anh Kim, for daring to raise the issue of restoring the former Democratic Party, as a possible threat to the political monopoly of the CPV.
The absence of a strong civil society deprives these individuals of proper protection against such crude and impudent interventions by state power.
We should not entertain the notion that the present leadership of the CPV is totally against the concept of civil society. They are too cunning for that. They know that the tide of multi-party democracy is unstoppable, and civil society will survive their rule and eventually prosper in Vietnam. By joining the WTO and exposing the Vietnamese economy to international competition, they are prepared to take the risk. But their risk-taking is measured and well considered. Their long term strategy is to slow down the process and keep a lid on the growth of civil society. With the continued existence of article 4, with continued control over the armed forces and security forces, they expect the balance will be kept in favor of the state over civil society for at least another generation. So much so that once civil society and the advent of true democracy have dawned on the nation, they and their ideological brethrens would have ample time to dispose of all traces of the wealth they amass, and steal from the people. Further, all evidence of their war crimes and crimes against humanity would have been destroyed.
Thus the task of democracy fighters is to reeve up the process of democratization, say within a few years, to speedily remove article 4 of the constitution, and remove CPV control of civil society, so as to allow unfettered growth and development to this very basic and crucial aspect of our democratic requirement.
A nation without a prosperous and healthy civil society may experience costly occasional relapses on its arduous journey towards the democratic ideal. Such relapses may or may not involve bloodshed. The peace-loving and enterprising people of Vietnam deserve no less than a speedy, smooth and bloodless transition to democracy because too much blood has already been shed by Communist folly. Too much time has been spent and the people refuse to sacrifice another generation to be guinea pigs for a new Communist experiment on greed and corruption.
Ðằng Vân
29 May 2006