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.
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