The hullabaloo and hype of Vietnam's Communist Party (CPV) congress is over for
another five years. The country has a renewed cast of leaders, and two things
are on the minds of its citizens: getting ready to celebrate the lunar new year
that begins on February 3, and teasing out the implications of elite personnel
changes for the conduct of government in the years ahead.
Inflation, particularly in the price of food, has thrown a cloud over the
approaching Tet holiday, traditionally a time for free spending on delicacies
and new clothes. Normally the government pumps
up the money supply in advance of the holiday and tightens up afterward. This
year, it would seem to have little choice but to brake hard right now. Since
the year-on-year increase in goods prices soared to 11.75% in December, far
outstripping Hanoi's 7% target, foreign analysts have taken to calling the
regime "obsessed by growth" to the detriment of macroeconomic balance.
Keynoters admitted as much at the recently concluded congress. Ranking party
bureaucrat Truong Tan Sang judged that "weaknesses in socio-economic management
[have resulted] in a fast increase of foreign debt, high risk of re-inflation
and haphazard investment". Sang, who's said to be a trenchant internal critic
of Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung's performance, will take over the state
presidency for the next five years while Dung remains in his post.
Plenty of pitfalls
A year ago, Dung looked as though he'd coast to a renewal of his mandate.
Vigorous deficit spending had enabled Vietnam to avoid a turndown despite the
global recession, and it was widely bruited that foreign investment would boom
as surging labor costs drove assembly plants out of China. But the investment
wave did not materialize, and instead Dung was hammered by the near-bankruptcy
of a once high-flying state-owned company, a yawning current account deficit
and failing confidence in the central bank's ability to manage the dong's
relationship to the dollar.
Amid the flood of short-term troubles, a 10-year socioeconomic strategy tabled
by the government in July got scant attention though it foreshadowed policies
needed to lift the economy from its unsustainable reliance on cheap labor and
depleting natural resources to sustainable growth based on knowledge industries
and integrated "value chains". As much as is possible in a land where every
important public statement is a collective product of the leadership, the
strategy is Dung's own game plan for his second term.
The socioeconomic strategy places heavy emphasis on improving the quality of
investment, that is, substituting a web of enterprises that respect the
environment, rely on local inputs, and emphasize ever-improving production
skills for the sweatshop-like assembly plants that typify the nation's
industrial sector today.
Foreign pundits have seized on the strategy's assertion that state-owned firms
will remain a prominent feature of the economy as evidence that it is not to be
taken seriously. The state sector's substantially lower efficiency is a
legitimate cause of concern, but so also is pervasive bureaucratic corruption,
inadequate and ill-coordinated public infrastructure development, the
concentration of growth in the nation's two big cities and widening disparities
of wealth and poverty.
The socioeconomic strategy, which was rubber-stamped by the 1,400 delegates to
the congress on January 17, proposes to deal with all these problems of
sustainable development in the years ahead and, at the same time, to maintain
annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth at 7% or better. Whether Vietnam's
government can meet those targets will depend on the cohesion and resolve that
its rejuvenated top leadership brings to the task.
New lineup
On the face of it, the CPV's new Politburo will be no more capable of making
radical course adjustments than its predecessor.
Six members were retired, and five added, but with no discernable shift towards
greater representation for any faction of the party. Cast in the role of
consensus-builder is 67 year-old Nguyen Phu Trong, who likely will have to
broker arguments between long-time rivals prime minister Dung and the new state
president Sang, and their allies.
As widely expected since a straw vote was taken by the CPV's previous central
committee in December, Trong was elected party secretary-general on the last
day of the congress. Trong worked for many years on the staff of the party's
theoretical journal, Tap Chi Cong San, becoming its editor in 1991. In 2000, he
was appointed head of the Hanoi party branch, a position he kept until 2006,
when he was elected chairman of the National Assembly. He is generally credited
with steering the National Assembly towards greater relevance as a forum for
critical discussion of national affairs and the performance of government
officials.
Nguyen Tan Dung, 62, is considered a relative liberal on economic policy but
conservative on internal security issues. The reformist prime minister Vo Van
Kiet brought Dung to Hanoi and onto the Politburo in 1995 after he had
distinguished himself as leader of the Mekong Delta province of Kien Giang.
After holding posts in the ministry of security and then as head of the body
that manages party finances, Dung was named to the Politburo in 1995. He became
governor of the state bank and a deputy prime minister in 1997. In 2005, he was
named prime minister, succeeding Pham Van Khai.
Sang, also 62 and a southerner, was first elected to the Politburo in 1995. He
built his early reputation as head of the Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) party
committee. Though Sang's reputation was tainted by the eruption of a criminal
scandal in Ho Chi Minh City in 2000-01, he reportedly managed intra-party roles
capably as head of finances and subsequently as deputy to retiring party
secretary Nong Duc Manh. It is believed that Sang campaigned actively to
succeed Manh and that the state presidency, a largely ceremonial role, is his
consolation prize.
Other returning members of the Politburo include minister of defense Phung
Quang Thanh (62), first deputy prime minister Nguyen Sinh Hung (62), minister
of public security Le Hong Anh (62), Ho Chi Minh City party secretary Le Thanh
Hai (61), chief ideologue To Huy Rua (63), and Hanoi party secretary Pham Quang
Nghi (62).
The five "first termers" include Major General Tran Dai Quang (55), a deputy
minister of defense, Tong Thi Phong (55), a deputy chairman of the National
Assembly, member of the Tai ethnic minority and the only woman member of the
politburo, Ngo Van Du, chief of staff to former party secretary Manh, Dinh The
Huynh, editor of the party's Nhan Dan newspaper, and Nguyen Xuan Phuc (56), who
has served as prime minister Dung's chief of staff.
David Brown is a retired American diplomat who writes on contemporary
Vietnam. He may be reached at nworbd@gmail.com.
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