THE ELECTION
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The Communist regime in Vietnam claims great success of its National Assembly election held on Sunday 19 May 2002. Newspapers, all state-owned, reported a huge turnout, 99+ percent voters have cast their ballots to elect representatives to the 11th National Assembly of 498 seats. On this occasion, Communist top leaders all predicted a bright future would come to the country and promised to get rid of corruption and to reform the ruling system.
A month before the election, Hanoi launched a pervasive propaganda campaign on newspapers, radio and television with red banners, banderoles, billboard on every street. From Hanoi and Saigon to the remote villages, loudspeakers were propagating political editorials day and night and appeal people to go voting. Hanoi has spent a lot of money for this occasion, as it’s necessary to give the election the best presentable image of a Communist-style democracy.
There were 759 candidates. All are Communist Party members except 125 who are not. However, Communist or non-Communist candidates, all must be approved by the Fatherland Front, a satellite organization directly controlled by the Communist Party.
All candidates must prove their allegiance to the Party and endorse the assertion that “the Communist Party is the only leader of the Vietnamese society.” So voters may “elect any of the candidates because they have been carefully selected by the Party,” says the basic instruction of the Party to the citizens in every election. Therefore, the Communist Party doesn’t have to do tricks to rig the elections as in many Third World countries including pre-75 South Vietnam.
According to report of the May 19 Election Council, national average turn out reached 99 percent. In many polling stations, it reached 100 percent at mid-morning. As voting is mandatory, Public Security officers at city wards or rural hamlets, who know every name and face in households under their responsibility, have to urge every single citizen to vote. So no one would be so stupid as to invite troubles and to have his or her name on the black list of the Public Security office.
Lao Dong (Labor) newspaper reported that in 32 polling stations of Giao Thuy and Xuan Truong districts, Nam Dinh province, turn out only reached 50 percent. The great majority of population in this area is Catholics. There might be some other disturbances that were not reported by state-owned media.
The number of seats in the assembly and the number of candidates as well as the composition of candidates’ social occupations are strictly decided by the Politburo. In general, the Politburo officially and overtly orders the National Assembly and the government basic rules of each election. For instance, the Politburo decided that in the 2002 election, 83 percent of candidates must be Party members.
The Party, through the Fatherland Front, decides where a candidate will be running for the seat. Therefore, many candidates have never lived or served in the electoral districts they would represent. This is applied in election of local people’s councils as well. Consequently, the majority of constituents don’t know anything about candidates they would vote for. Candidates are not permitted to campaign individually. Their meetings with limited voters are held in groups under supervision of the Front. At the meetings, no individual views are mentioned.
In this year’s election, facing complaints by voters and foreign advice, the Politburo ordered that about 125 representatives who have some knowledge about legislative issues will be appointed as full time members of the National Assembly. Traditionally, representatives are not supposed to have any law making expertise and all bills are drafted by government agencies.
Under the Communist regime in Vietnam, representatives are not serving the legislature full time. They are paid for the annual sessions they attend. When the Assembly is in recess, they have to go back to their permanent jobs in the private or state sectors, the government offices or the armed forced units they belong to. So it’s nothing uncommon to see many representatives who are also ministers, generals, and chiefs of villages, wage earners, street sweepers and farmers.
The first NA elected on January 6, 1946 had more than 100 representatives in the opposition who were members of the Viet Quoc and other nationalist parties. In the Summer and August 1946 political purge, most of them were assassinated by Communist death squads or incarcerated on charge of “traitors.” In December 1946, the remaining members hastily passed the 1946 Constitution though it was strongly opposed by non-partisan Assembly members.
From the second to the current assembly, not a word of opposition from a representative has been heard of. The legislature has been playing the role of the rubber stamp. In the last decade, Communist leaders have allowed them to express their own ideas on limited areas and issues, questioning the ministers, also in a strict limit. National Assembly members, however, may not criticize or question the Politburo’s members.
Foreign reporters have noticed some peculiarities in this election. This is the first time; fourteen candidates are entrepreneurs, when Hanoi is following in Beijing’s footsteps of accepting business people into the Communist Party. The most remarkable sign of a better Assembly is eighty percent of the candidates are first-timers in the May 19 election. Those are younger with somewhat better formal education.
According to AP, the election seemed all but forgotten Monday 20 with no mention of the Sunday poll on state television’s noon news. Red flags and banners were gone, no more early morning exhortations on loudspeakers to vote.
Meanwhile, common people are showing little enthusiasm in the election. Many young men and women said that their votes meant nothing as election results had been predetermined, and little had changed from the previous assemblies. A housewife told AFP that this election isn’t going to change anything, and it’s a waste of taxpayer’s money.
A large number of voters have one relative cast the ballots of the entire family members. That is the reason why lots of voters don’t know whom they have voted for.
The first session of the newly elected 11th Assembly will take place within two months and the Politburo is to decide on a cabinet reshuffle. Tran Duc Luong, president and Phan Van Khai, prime minister, are expected to retain their jobs at least for one or two more years.
Many observers in the overseas Vietnamese community don’t think that the new 11th Hanoi National Assembly will fulfill the Communist leaders’ expectation of a legislative body that will be capable of renovating the legal system to support further economic reform, particularly the integration into global economy.
With the illiterate Communist top leaders holding totalitarian power, even the best legislative with all 498 geniuses could do nothing much better to the Vietnamese people.
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