* TO END CORRUPTION AND SOCIAL EVILS 

HANOI.- According to AFP, on Aug 18, former Vietnamese Communist Prime Minister Pham Van Dong called on Vietnam's Communist Party to stamp out corruption and social evils, starting at the top. 

It was time to pay more than lip service to the need for a cultural cleanup, 92-year-old Dong said in a commentary in the official Nhan Dan or People newspaper. 

"Not only words but concrete and effective actions are needed, beginning with party organs, state apparatus and mass organizations," said Dong, VCP premier for more than 30 years. 

Because of his experience and age, Dong is the standard bearer of the Vietnamese Communists. He enjoys a distance from the current ruling group which enables him to make occasional commentaries on the moral state of the nation and party.

His statement came as the Communist party and government were showing great concerns on the increasing social evils - crimes, pornography, prostitution, drugs, gambling and corruption. 

He called for the readjustment of the entire political system, and said that the highest ideological leaders must set the example. He insisted - as Le Kha Phieu, the VCP general secretary had said weeks ago - that a campaign of criticism and self-criticism at the heart of the party and state must be launched and linked to the campaign of mobilization of the people to build a cultural life.

He praised, as he has always done, Marxist Leninism as "the cultural summit of humanity and the thoughts of Ho Chi Minh are the cultural summit of Vietnamese history." 

Dong reacted after he and some other VCP leaders received an open letter signed by 11 elderly communist revolutionaries charging some party officials of corrupt behavior. 

The letter, now circulating in the underground press, appeals to Dong and others to pressure politburo member Pham The Duyet and Hanoi People's Committee Chairman Dinh Hanh to come clean by declaring all their land holdings and how they were obtained. 

Although Dong is considered a "clean" leader, during his more than 30 years of premiership, corruption was living on in every branch of the party and his government and increased with more available resources after 1975, especially since the market economic reforms were introduced. 

Meanwhile, social evils exist and are blooming because local authorities either ignore them or protect them for share of profits.  

Few Vietnamese expect anything relevant to be achieved by Dong's appeal.

* POVERTY ALLEVIATION PROGRAM 

HANOI.- According to Xinhua news agency, Vietnam's Communist government state news agency reported on August 18 that the VCP has approved a three-year national program aimed at reducing the number of poor households nationwide to 10 percent by 2000.

Hanoi estimated about 20 percent of households in the country are below the poverty line. In fact, it might be much more.  

The national program for poverty alleviation and hunger elimination for the 1998-2000 period will implement projects helping ethnic minorities to lead a sedentary life and increase production to improve their living standards. The program will focus on remote, mountainous and border areas as well as islands. 

About 10 trillion Vietnamese dong (700 million u.s. dollars) will be needed to invest in implementing the various projects under the program, the Vietnam news said. The sum will be from the state budget and international assistance. 

For years since the market economic reforms were introduced, the rural sector has been mostly ignored. The gap between poor farmers and new red-bourgeois is larger and larger.  

The Hanoi government preferred light industry sector to attract foreign invstments for immediate political and security objectives to rural development. This requires long term efforts with very large investment that no foreign investor is interested in.  

Only the government is able to solve the problem. However, with only 700 million dollars for three years, it seems impossible to successfully implement this ambitious program.  

* THE LA VANG 200th ANNIVERSARY 

QUANG TRI.- AFP and other news agencies reported that the festival at La Vang for the 200th anniversary of the Virgin Mary's apparition ended Saturday, August 15. According to the reports, less than 200,000 people joined the congregation. 

Contrary to warnings by the communist authorities concerning food and water shortage, everything went on smoothly. Catholics from all over the country coming here could easily buy food, water, refreshment and souvenirs from hundreds of stalls around the area. 

For some stall renters like Ms. Phuc, who is not Catholic, it's all about business and not prayers.  

"We are operating 24 hours a day," she says, as she stirs a frying pan in her one meter square kitchen, space she has paid eight dollars to rent for the festival. 

While the stalls have set up on Catholic grounds, the church never sees any of the revenue from permit fees and rentals, explains Sister Agnes Phan Thi Phu. 

"The People's Committee (the local government) charges people for parking and selling, and the church doesn't get anything," she complained. 

She certainly knows that this is one of the reasons why local government has not interfered in the festival.

HANOI.- As reported by AFP and DPA, Vietnamese businessmen spend more time grappling with bureaucratic red tape than attending to the needs of their businesses, according to an official survey seen Monday, August 17. 

Both state and private businesses spend fully one-third of their time getting approvals and passing inspections by the government's pervasive bureaucracy, said a survey conducted in July by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI). 

The survey was forwarded to Hanoi's Prime Minister Phan Van Khai, who has declared war on red tape and corruption, yet many survey respondents said "government agencies have made zero progress towards meeting their promises" of easing such problems, according to the report. 

The nationwide survey consulted 500 firms across a full range of business sectors, chamber officials said. 

State-owned enterprises accounted for 60 per cent of the companies surveyed, compared to 40 per cent private businesses, although comparison figures between the two categories were not made available. 

Both state and private firms complained of the deeply-entrenched tradition of gift-giving and outright bribery to bureaucrats.  

However, government legislation has for the most part failed in its bid to streamline interaction between businesses and the country's bloated bureaucracy, the survey added. 

The prime minister earlier this year established ministry-level telephone hotlines in Hanoi and southern Ho Chi Minh City to field complaints on graft and other problems, but the business community has tended to see these as inadequate, superficial and having no real effect, the VCCI reported. 

It seems that one of the prime minister's duties is to deliver directives and vocal attacks against red tape and corruption once in every few years. The Nhan Dan daily 40-year publications prove the fact that such appeal to eradicate red tape and corruption has been reiterated many times since 1957, while the problems have been getting worse and worse._