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Vietnam’s New Cabinet: a case of nothing new and too late |
Ðằng Vân
Point of View
While competing nations in South East Asia are moving speedily in the spheres of international integration, open and accountable governance, human rights and multi-party democracy, the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) continues to drag its feet. In doing so, it enjoys the company of the truly infamous ones such as dictators in Myanmar, North Korea and Mainland China.
The line up of the CPV approved cabinet on 2 August 2007 confirms beyond any shadow of doubt CPV’s determination to hold on to monopoly of power at any cost, despite the rampant corruption resulting from absolute power in Lord Acton’s renowned dictum.
It is entirely predictable that all 22 members of the new cabinet are also members of the all powerful CPV Central Committee. For all his verve, PM Nguyen Tan Dung is looking increasingly like a stooge of General Secretary Nong Duc Manh. Dung is being supervised by no less than two arch-conservatives Phung Quang Thanh (Defence) and Le Hong Anh (Public Security). The more the world moves towards open and accountable governance, the more scared the CPV becomes and shut itself from the external world.
Unfortunately, they do this at the expense of our people in terms of national shame.
Indeed, while PM Nguyen Tan Dung parades “his” new cabinet as a personal victory, no doubt, under instructions from Nong Duc Manh, his diplomats at the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) have refused point blank to support the creation of a Human Rights Commission, under a charter of human rights such association is drafting.
ASEAN consists of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Of these Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar refused to submit their regimes to peer scrutiny in relation to respect for human rights.
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar all have either military dictatorship or one-party dictatorship. In this day and age, only Nong Duc Manh, Nguyen Minh Triet, Nguyen Tan Dung and his CPV colleagues are thick-skinned enough to argue that the Vietnamese people should wear the one-party label as a badge of honor.
While the international community, for some obscure reason has focused their attention and criticism on military dictatorships and an erratic vermin the like of the Burmese generals or Robert Mugabe, the true villains of the century are the various communist parties running North Korea, Mainland China, Cuba and Vietnam. These are the true heirs to the combined legacies of Nazism and Stalinism. As adversaries of democracy and human dignity, they are much more dangerous. Their evil regimes rule both government and civil society with systemic resolve, through absolute control of the army and the security machine. All oppositions are ruthlessly extinguished. Compared to Nguyen Tan Dung and Nong Duc Manh, leaders of the Burmese military junta are no more than a bunch of spoiled kids.
But if ASEAN is to forge ahead, in the extremely competitive international community, as a forum of respectable nations in the 21st century, then respect for basic human rights by all its member-nations must be part and parcel of a human rights commission charter.
Such charter should provide for objective and measurable human rights standards, mechanisms for inspection and expulsion clauses if regimes such as Myanmar or Communist Vietnam failed objective standards.
When the dignity of the individual citizens is at stake, dictators should not be allowed to hide behind the veils of national sovereignty. Neither Nguyen Tan Dung nor Nong Duc Manh should be immune from international condemnation, and in a not distant future, from criminal prosecution.
Leaders of ASEAN nations such as Thailand and the Philippines should be congratulated on their efforts to clean ASEAN’s own backyard and rid itself of all the deadwood and dirt that has beleaguered the Vietnamese people for more than half a century.
CPV leaders have defied the will of the Vietnamese people because, through the machinations of Ho Chi Minh and Mao Tse Tung, they succeeded in controlling the army and the police. They have decided to swim against the tide of history and hang on to absolute power. Prejudiced by their own audacity, they believe they can stare down other ASEAN leaders in emerging democracies. Their audacity and perfidy should be resisted with determination and the Vietnamese people will be grateful for it.
ASEAN will only be a truly great forum for its component nations once the unfortunate peoples of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar have successfully overthrown the yokes of communist and military dictatorships, and regained their human rights in the process.
Then the people will decide democratically whether the 22 members of cabinet of PM Nguyen Tan Dung, with all their pretty uniforms, business suits and diplomas, rightly belong to government offices or to the Saigon zoo.
Ðằng Vân
4 August 2007