Any international observers of Vietnam today, particularly members of the foreign press, can attest to the irrelevancy of Communism, and ideology for that matter, in the life of the current Vietnamese society. Except for a few lone cries of the old guards like former Premier Pham Van Dong or new stars-want-to-be like Deputy Head of Party's Ideological and Cultural Commission Dao Duy Quat calling for the revival of ideological supremacy, the rest of the Vietnamese Communist Party and its government have largely accepted the reality of prolonging the Party's stark survival with foreign cash at the price of marginalizing Communism from any non-ceremonial activities of society.
Vietnamese people have moved at even faster pace than the Party. Not just what the government said but the government itself have become increasingly irrelevant in people's lives. This attitude is apparent in the recent devastating flood in central Vietnam and the subsequent relief effort.
Central Vietnam is traditionally the poorest region of this country which is itself among the poorest nations on Earth. This region also suffers from flooding every year following severe storms during the monsoon season. The populace, therefore, depended heavily on the forests along the Truong Son mountain range to slow down the torrential flow and give the overfilled rivers more precious time to reach the ocean. The level of water and the damages from the flowing force were, therefore, reduced significantly. However, in the last 2 decades, the Vietnamese Communist Party has given the military the blank check on clearing the forests for lumbers and sale of land. The irresponsible race of deforestation among units of the military and their affiliated provincial governments started and has not slowed down since despite the repeated warnings from the United Nations and other international organizations of severe environmental consequences.
The Head of the Forest Industry Bureau admitted on the Lao Dong (Labor) Newspaper in October, 1999 that Vietnam now has only one fifth of the world average forest coverage per capita -- 0.6 hecta per person, but is cutting trees at the speed of 5 times as fast as the world average.
People have given up on any hopes that the Party could wean the military from this harmful source of income, or clean up effectively any forms of corruption for that matter. The Party leaders need the loyalty of the military more than anything else to face the increasingly dissatisfied population.
People have also resigned to the fact that the government will not launch any real rescue effort except for the show for the international media. After the government announced that it had ordered 3 transporter planes and 7 helicopters from the airforce to the rescue effort, news from Vietnam revealed that all transporters continued to sit in Nghe An province - 300 km from the affected area. According to witnesses in Hue, helicopters flew by daily but did not attempt any rescue of people stranded on roof tops. Four days into the disaster, the Party Secretary General reported to the Party Central Plenum that the Navy "was planning" to send its boats to the area. A week later, the actual convoys of rescuers at the scene was made up of private rafts, wooden canoes, and big round tar-covered bamboo baskets rowing around to share food with their less fortunate neighbors or collecting floating corpses.
Meanwhile, upon receiving the news of the disaster, people in other regions of the country started their own relief effort to assist the victims. From south and north Vietnam, representatives of all major religions have collected money and clothing and traveled to central Vietnam with the donation. Almost overnight, Vietnamese around the world spread the news of the disaster and sent their own representatives home with donation or made contribution through the International Red Cross.
Learning from the bad experiences of the past, Vietnamese both inside and outside the country have deliberately stayed away from the state-sponsored religious organizations and the Party-run Fatherland Front who have the government's exclusive permits to collect donations for the flood relief. Such silent boycott had brought the government's anger directly on the private drive to help the victims.
Five years ago, when the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam rolled its truck convoy carrying donations to the Mekong delta to help the flood victims, it was stopped at gunpoint and dozens of the Church's leaders, including its second and third highest official Ven. Thich Quang Do and Thich Tue Sy, were sent to jail. Some remain there to this day. Beside preserving the opportunities for individual Party cadres to skim for themselves, the Party insisted on being the only influence in society and people's lives.
Despite the expected harassment and outright attack by the government, people and religious organizations continued to find the openings in the government fence to bring help quietly and directly to the victims. The recently released Ven. Thich Quang Do and Thich Tue Sy, representing their now banned Church, are among the religious leaders calling on all Vietnamese to help one another.
By refusing to carry out fundamental changes and continuing to rely solely on brutality, the Vietnamese Communist Party and its government have quickly become irrelevant in their own country. Vietnamese people have learned not to provoke the Party but bypass it to get on with their business. Years from now, historians might very well consider this collective behavior the dawn of democracy - people running things their way - in Vietnam.