DOUBTFUL RENOVATION

DOUBTFUL RENOVATION

Van Nguyen

The “People’s Democracy came to a close. Degradation persisted in every aspect of the social, economic, and political life of the Vietnamese people. It denotes the burning failures resulting from the monopoly of power of the conceited of the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam.  The situation of national education with a health care system ranked among the sectors of success is much more adverse. Le Thanh Khoi remarks that, beginning from 1980, the school registration figures fall considerably and little is known about the weaknesses. Class repetition, poor quality of teaching, and female participation (30% only) are among the problems of concern. At the higher levels, ideological education actively recommended. A question is raised: "How to show the genuinely of socialist idealism when the real society is organized by the culprits of corruption." Other problems converge on the study of Pham Thi Hoai on the winding evolution of female condition which she examines in all facets --formation, job, and access to levels of control, conditions of work, marital services and divorce. After a savoring note excerpted from the passage of the relatively traditional vision, she misses conclusion.  Taking into consideration all the historical parameters that interfere in shaping the present, the author ascertains that this may result from the timidity of actions of the leaders of the Union of women. "Let's hope,” she concludes, "they will go farther."

   

  The whole phenomenon, so rich and new, raises several questions that remain unanswered. It is a surprise to public opinion that keen observers such as Marcel Autret and Nguyen Duc Nhuan do not formulate any reserve vis-a-vis the policy of displacement such as the solution to demographic explosion. Timidity? The will of not to cause damage to the dialogue with the Vietnamese authorities?  None of the authors approaches the political aspect of the problems, regardless of the fact that it is a fundamental one. All show that, nowadays, the system of the unique party leads to an impasse. Wouldn't it be good to seek to institutional formulas to guarantee the expression of diversity of opinions? If not, all renovation of the spirit of critics remains illusory. If this type of the question remains a taboo in Vietnam, Three would be more of this type among the Vietnamese of the diaspora.

    

 Certain texts might be gained, and so many things had evolved between 1984 and 1986. And this evolution had been carried out.  A dispatch from the AFP of October 12, 1987 signaled that the "renovators," nowadays, agreed to disengage themselves from the cumbersome tutelage of the clan chief Le Duc Tho that set obstacle to an open-door policy towards the West. The total absence of access to this information on the future policy in the Parisian press was Imminent. Without “openness”, Vietnam could fall in the nothingness in the eyes of the French public.”

Mistakes and errors appear to be redundant. They were found out even in the ideological context and policy for renovation with precepts modeled on “glasnost and perestroika” in the later years of the 1980’s. It was extensively popularized but gained little success. The sense about the floral goal and grandiose programs for renovation meant little significance and vague importance to the masses. Common cadres and state officials without emoluments might also feel what irony empty speeches on renovation were about.  What would it mean by “renovation” in a country where "principles of socialism" are the sole compass illuminating the path to a classless society in every aspect? It is difficult to figure out what such a society would be. Hopefuls with reason for optimism expected a return to a “Worsen democracy style.”

Nguyen Van Tran, a long-standing Communist of the South, in his memoirs “Viet cho Me va Quoc Hoi” (To Mom and the National Assembly), depicted the somber picture of the regime following the ten-year period of People’s Democracy. Vietnam was hampered with numerous impediments to renovation. The mechanism of leadership “engenders a cumbersome machinery of administration. Reduction of the staff would immerse civil servants in unemployment. The Party leadership hierarchy .is even more riddled with good-for-nothing organs. We have, for instance, a Front, which only serves instrumentally for an apparent democracy. We also support satellite organs that are deceitfully attributed to as the organs of the Front. Other impediments lie on the path to renovation. The political subordination to the Soviet Union and dependence on the COMECON for mutual economic aids are central. Still, renovation is conditional on other noxious factors that were ruining the ailing economy, including the failures to incorporate regional economic operations into the national economy systems, inflation, and the overpopulation.”

The independent journalist Nguyen Ngoc Lan confided in his friends that he was born on July 14, the day the French people destroyed the Bastille bastion. He said, complaining: “I have lived through many periods of history: the French colonialism, the August Revolution in 1945 and the Government of the Democratic Republic Vietnam, the Bao Dai Government backed up by the French, the Nguyen Van Thieu Government supported by the Americans, and now the Government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. I have witnessed the change of course of history. All this has made me think so constantly about the term 'independence.”  Someone says we enjoy independence now. I say independence should be for the whole people. It should be for the absolute majority. Only independence as such is meaningful. Under the French domination, there was full independence for 10,000 French colonialists just like the one for the French in France while our 20 million Vietnamese fellow countrymen were slaves. Now, there might be, perhaps, independence for approximately 10% of the two million members of the Vietnamese Communist Party, but, how about more than 70 million Vietnamese fellow countrymen. That's painful! (Do Trung Hieu, 1995: 59).”   

    Intolerance persisted. Nguyen Ho, an outstanding veteran communist of the south, pointed out that the Communist party has persistently followed a policy of discrimination against whatever organization deemed to be hostile to communism. By believing in such Marxist concepts as materialism is antagonistic spiritualism and atheism to theism, for instance,  the Vietnamese Communists have executed policies of oppression, repression, and even murderous terrorism against the religions, namely, Cao Dai, Hoa Hao Buddhism, Evangelical Christianity, and Buddhism. Religious followers are “reactionaries” and “henchmen if the imperialists.” With the armed forces they had at hand, the Communist opened weeping operations to destroy the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao Buddhists. They launched waves of attack and executed series of mass killing of dignitaries and followers of these religions during the first years of the Resistance War against the French (1945-1959).

   The targets for elimination of the Cao Dai were the mainly areas in the Eastern region of South Vietnam including the provinces of Tay Ninh, Gia Dinh, Thu Dau Mot, Bien Hoa, and Ba Ria. As regards the Hoa Hao Buddhists, the targets were the areas in the Western region including the provinces of Long Xuyen, Chau Doc, Rach Gia, Bac Lieu, and Can Tho. Throughout the nine years of resistance against the French invaders (1945-1954) and the twenty years of the country’s parturition, the Catholics and Evangelicals in the North were the objects of fierce repression of socialism. At the time the Geneva Agreements were signed (July 1954) regulating the partition of the country, two million Catholics and Evangelicals instantly immigrated in waves to the South to escape the “Communist Peril. “The twenty years (1955-1975) were, to the dignitaries and followers of these religions who stayed in the North, a grievous endurance. They were treated as if they had been in a large prison. (Nguyen Ho, 1993: 39).   

There was no green light at the end of the tunnel. Repressions, oppression, and persecution ever continued following the Communist takeover of South Vietnam. The year 1984, in particular, involved a mass arrest of "counter- revolutionaries." It was reported that there 2,000 people were convicted on various charges following a treason trial with five defendants sentenced to death that ended on December 18, 1984. A big trial of about 80 Buddhists from a temple near Ho Chi Minh City convicted on charges of suspected "counterrevolutionaries" was reported. Series of trials were planned in the months that followed with charges ranging from "counterrevolutionary" activity to opposition to the Hanoi government. Overall, the Court would try some 2,000 people in Saigon before April 30, 1984, the 10th anniversary of its fall to the Communists (Charles-Antoine de Nectar, AFP, December19, 1984).   

     

  Internal conflict posed a serious problem. After the reunification of the country in July 1976, the politics of “Northernization of the South” was carried out unremittingly to the detriment of the leaders of the former National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam. The seizure of power of Hanoi extended to the district level in the South. Ranking cadres of the former Front promoted to key positions in the Party and the State were rare. Thus, for example, of the 13 members of the politburo, one Southerner (Vo Van Kiet) was present at the Sixth Party Congress (December, 1986), and only three members from the South emerged after the Seventh Party Congress: Vo Van Kiet and his two protégés, Phan Van Khai, vice prime minister, and Vo Tran Tri, first secretary of the Party at Ho Chi Minh City. The other members of the politburo were from Central and North Vietnam.

Facing both political and economic problems in perspective, the Party, on the one hand, soothed dissidence among the student ranges by apportioning them with larger food rations. At the same time, it loosened economic restrictions, relaxing to some extent small private businesses and preparing the laws and regulations for foreign investment and international transactions.  On the other hand, the administration launched campaigns of repression against political plurality negating all forms of opposition inside the Party and among the masses. To this end, the Central Executive Committee of the Vietnamese Communist Party held its conference in Saigon in September 1989 and decided to take harsh measures against possible dissidence and opposition. The daily Nhan Dan (The People) ran a long article warning the masses and public opinion against what it called "the freedom in the manner of capitalism," the phrase which was alluded to the demands of political reforms in Poland. Of particular concern, it called for the protection of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the role of leadership of the Vietnamese Communist Party.