Feb. 15, 2000
Excerpts
Is the question: Good Morning Viet Nam, or Good Night? It is rhetorically being asked, sometimes clamorously so, in the streets, rice paddies, expat offices and Party headquarters, as the system rings in Year 2000.
The Year 1999 has been a difficult one to track in terms of social and political developments. Somewhat less so in economic terms, but more depressing. Charting the year chiefly meant reading the Politburo reading its tea leaves.
One fact clearly emerges: the ruling Politburo -- where all power resides -- is in a desperate quandary. It's a damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don't dilemma which pits the past against the future; the old against the young; hope against anxiety. Here is a true policy-making dilemma: persist in refusing to reform and be left behind; open up and political change becomes unstoppable. It not only threatens the personal careers of the Politburo 18, but raises the stark vision that the past sacrifices of each may be judged by history as going for naught.
By all evidence the Politburo spent the year agonizing over the question: whither Viet Nam? In the economic sector it wrestled with involuted decisions on production, supply and demand, stimulation of the economy -- the same questions that some other systems have recently solved brilliantly without knowing quite how they did it. In Viet Nam the younger members challenged the older ones; the reformers debated the ideologues. Always at the root: agreed, we must makes changes, but how much risk to take? Risk change and have the system blow up in your face. Don't change and have the system blow up in your face.
At year's end, the air cleared. The Politburo redefined its collective wisdom. It is this: we have no intention of making any social or political change that in any significant way endangers the status quo. If we can be shown riskless change that does not alter the ruling system, well and good. If not, forget it. We will change nothing and we will live with the consequences.
Whatever past indecisiveness did exist is now gone. Whatever genuine debate, raged, it has now dissipated. In truth, such policy thinking has prevailed for the past several years. Now it is out in the open.
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT:
The Pham Duc Phong report at midyear triggered once more a campaign against corruption in Party and State. Phong's Public Property Office audited the books of 55,000 government and Party agencies, found $5.8 billion in assets unaccounted for (29% of the total assets), most of it in the form of furniture, office supplies and vehicles. The semi-purge that was launched against corruption in the Party brought forth charges (as in past anti-corruption drives) that the campaign was being misused by officials to settle old political scores or to eliminate the security guardians such as Phong (the ancient problem of quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - who will guard the guardians?). PM Phan Van Khai lectured the country on the evil effects of corruption: it taints Party image; it is detrimental to foreign investment; it makes the Vietnamese people distrustful of authority. The Party drive to purge "corrupt and degraded cadres" ran noisily during the year but by the end of 1999 had gone quiet.
Crime increased, the Ministry of Social Affairs reported, linking it to increased use of illegal drugs. Viet Nam now has 132,000 registered heroin addicts (70% of burglary arrests are addicts). Drug convictions in Ha Noi doubled during 1999 (general crime was up 40%). Viet Nam's "sex worker" population set at 300,000 now being unionized. Heroin drug addiction among college students increased from 68/1000 in 1996 to 325/1000 in 1998, while the total number of student heroin addictions rose from 92/1000 in 1996 to 860/1000 in 1999, a true epidemic.
LEADERSHIP:
The year was marked by personnel changes which, together with other policy problems, increased tensions severely in the traditionally cohesive Politburo. Such was the conclusion by most observers, even when they differed as to how severe were those tensions. Viet Nam's "leopard spot" governance--little fiefdoms run by local Party people often corrupt and worse, immune to rectification--plagued the system. As described by PM Khai, there were "areas managed by corrupt officials that have become terrible places for Vietnamese people to live."
The Party leadership worried publicly over the state of young Vietnamese intellectuals, a worry echoed by the press. Nhan Dan (April 24) asserted that young intellectuals in Viet Nam feel they are unmotivated. Most are in academia and their malaise is traceable to worry over quality of education and career opportunities.
"Many young (Party) cadres are really worried about their future. After graduation, most have to struggle for a daily living, thus having little time for improving their skills or gaining further qualifications. Statistics available show that 32% of the staff in universities and colleges is under 35, and among them only 3.7% have received training overseas. The average age of higher education degree holders in 57.2 years."
Then came a "deepening social crisis," as the NGO economists put it so carefully. The growth rate (earlier in the decade at 10% p/a) began to fall, ending the decade at 4%. This was coupled with "regional displacement" (again, as the economists put it), that is, the emergent recovery of other Asian economies which left Viet Nam at further disadvantage. Doi moi turned out to be chiefly rhetoric. Viet Nam became closer to Cuba than China. FDI went back to the 1992 level.
The Politburo hunkered down in its bunker as it has done in the past during times of trouble. By all evidence it now simply lacks political will. It lashes out at socio-political divisiveness lumped under the rubric of "social evils". These continue to multiply, defying remedial measures that in any case are too cautious and too few.
Vietnam Center - Texas Tech University