Although he is the youngest member of the communist party leadership at 61, Nong Duc Manh is no reformist. During his eight years as speaker of parliament, he had a law passed that was particularly restrictive of press freedom. A dissident journalist, Nguyen Dinh Huy, has been jailed in Vietnam since November 1993. He has been sentenced to 15 years for "taking part in a banned movement" (RSF Excerpt November 2001)
A product of the communist nomenklatura, 61-year-old Nong Duc Manh was nominated to the post of secretary general of the communist party in April 2001 to replace Le Kha Phieu, considered too rigid. The youngest member of the party politbureau was also the first representative of an ethnic minority, the Tay, to occupy such a senior position. Some believe that he owes his success to the fact that he was a son of Hô Chi Minh. Less conservative than his predecessor, he remains a prisoner of the war between the different currents in the communist party, and of his reputation as a "mediocre" leader. As president of the national assembly for eight years, Nong Duc Manh proved to have little taste for reform. In 1999 he was responsible for a particularly liberticidal law that gave the culture and information minister full responsibility over the media and particularly the Internet. Nong Duc Manh has never defended Vietnamese dissidents and especially not journalists who are still liable to heavy jail sentences for "libel" and "spreading false news". One of them, 68-year-old Nguyen Dinh Huy, sentenced to 15 years in jail for "participating in a banned movement", has been behind bars since November 1993.
Foreign journalists who stray off the beaten track are not welcome in Vietnam. Sylvaine Pasquier, reporter for the French weekly L'Express, was arrested and expelled from the country in April 2000 after trying to meet dissidents. (Reporters Without Borders).