Viet Nam's campaign against corruption begins

News Desk
Viet Nam News
Publication Date: 02-06-2009

The Vietnamese Government has launched a campaign against corruption and bribery which it says is holding back innovation, creating social unrest and threatening the political system.

It has put into place a national strategy to stamp out abuse of power for personal interest at all levels of State, local government and private enterprise by building a more effective and transparent administration system.

The resolution was signed late in May by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.

The landmark strategy includes the honing of economic institutions so the business environment operates solely on a competitive basis and encouraging the media to dig out and report corruption by allowing more freedom of information and paring back State classified information to the point of necessity.

Inspections and prosecutions would also be transparent and widely publicised.

The strategy recognised that the complicated corruption situation in Viet Nam was affecting people’s trust in the Government and causing conflicts of interest in the society.

Corruption expert Professor Dang Ngoc Dinh, who advised on drafting the strategy, described it as "correct and to the point".

"I think this strategy accurately reflects the reality of what’s happening in society," Dinh said. "For example, it states that corruption is happening in many fields and it’s complicated, especially in the management of land and property, construction investment, the equitisation of State-owned enterprises and the management and use of State capital and properties to bring about negative consequences.

"It’s eroding the people’s trust in the Party and the Government, increasing social conflicts of interest and widening the gap between the rich and the poor," he said.

"Facing the truth is best for the success of any strategy," he said.

However, Tran Van Truyen, Inspector General, said Viet Nam lacked experience in dealing with corruption.

"We are working with specialists from other countries that have been successful in dealing with corruption and, based on their experience, Viet Nam needs an evaluation scheme with certain standards, inspections and research which will help us assess the qualitative and quantitative results."

The resolution introducing the strategy proposes five basic groups of solutions:
* Enhancing the openness and transparency of policy-making and the building and enforcement of the legislation,
* Perfecting the mechanisms of inspection and supervision of the aforementioned enhancement,
* Perfecting the mechanism of the economy’s management and building a more publicised and transparent business environment,
* Strengthening the effectiveness of inspection, supervision, audit and the investigation and prosecution of corruption cases, and
* Raising awareness and upholding the role of the whole society in preventing and fighting corruption.

The resolution stated the fight against corruption would be a long and difficult work, requiring the participation at all central and local levels.

Therefore, the strategy would be implemented in three periods. The first one would be until 2011, when all five groups of solutions would be synchronously implemented in order to improve the ability of detecting and handling corruption cases. The focus of this period would be the handling of the biggest and widely publicised corruption cases.

The second period, from 2011 to 2016, would focus on prevention by surveillance of State officials’ assets and properties and a review of the first 10 years of the implementation of the Law on Preventing and Fighting Corruption, modifying it to keep it up-to-date.

The third period, from 2016 to 2020, would be to consolidate the work from the previous period.
Dinh said the first criterion to evaluate and rank the seriousness of corruption was the level of openness and transparency of State administrative activities.

"Obviously, it is essential to find the causes before coming up with the solution," Dinh said.
It was impossible for the legislation to resolve all the moral matters, he said. Therefore, moral education for State officials was also very important.

However, there was something still missing in the strategy, Dinh said, and that was a mechanism to protect people who witnessed and reported corruption, without which the fight against graft would not reach its fullest potential.