Can Vietnam's Communist Party Separate Power and Politics?

Every five years, Vietnamese dare to hope this time, the ruling Communist Party will take a chance on change.

Four successive party congresses have simply kicked the ball in the future. They have redistributed positions mainly with a view to protecting factional balance. The leadership has been left deadlocked on core issues: Vietnam’s stance toward The far east and other powers, the state’s role in the economy and regardless of whether Party actions should be susceptible to review by independent judges.

The 12th Party Congress will convene early in 2016. About 1400 delegates will assemble in Hanoi to verify agreements hammered out one of the party’s heavyweights. The most likely outcome is the election of the current Pm, Nguyen Tan Dung, to the top party post: general secretary. A majority of their allies and protégés will likely be elevated to the party Politburo or executive committee.

The foreign media are apt to spin the 12th Congress as a referendum on Vietnam’s foreign policy orientation: may the Party’s pro-Chinese wing cling to key posts or should they yield to a pro-American faction? They will be behind the curve. That perennial issue was resolved six months ago when US The president assured the current General Secretary, Nguyen Phu Trong, that the United States is quite alright with Vietnam’s current political system. China has misplaced Vietnam’s ‘strategic trust’ and the United States is on the way to winning it. It is an epochal shift that is situated Hanoi between the two superpowers but in the wallet of neither.

At the 12th Congress, Dung seems poised to dominate. He is a savvy politician who in 10 years as prime minister has built a formidable bloc associated with supporters, a coalition of reformers (through Party standards) and opportunists. On the current Central Committee, they are a solid majority who has two times blocked unusually public attempts by the Politburo to trim Dung’s sails.

Party members know that revolutionary catch phrases no longer move the masses. It has been 40 years since the nation had been unified under Communist rule and also the median age of its Ninety two million citizens is 28. Most delegates to the Twelfth Congress would agree which what matters now is ‘overall performance legitimacy’ – the good vibes that flow from firm, sound and merely leadership. Can the Celebration deliver?

The Party still monopolises energy, but it no longer monopolises Vietnam’s political life. The Hanoi regime must contend with an internet-enabled chorus associated with dissidents who have grown steadily modern-day and persuasive in their research into the Party’s political underperformance. Online critics flay the regime as attentive of ‘the interests’, crony capitalists who are very apt to trade cash with regard to political favours.

Assuming the prime minister’s slate will prevail, ‘the interests’ are likely to line up behind him or her rather than find themselves marginalised. Thus, an enormous majority of the renewed Central Committee membership may vote Dung and the protégés into power. May Dung then be in position in order to press a reform plan, to don the layer of a Vietnamese Lee Kuan Yew or Recreation area Chung-hee? Do not bet on it yet.

By most accounts, Dung’s a shrewd opportunist who has reinvented himself following stumbling when the worldwide recession rolled over Vietnam and cratered their pet projects. Since then, Dung has responded to popular impatience for change. In a widely congratulated speech two years ago, the prime minister endorsed a radical idea: the job of the condition is to create conditions that permit ordinary citizens to release their creative potential. He’s populated his cabinet along with talented managers and now, it is stated, Dung listens attentively to the guidance offered by the nation’s brand new generation of bright, Western-trained economists.

It is less the opposition of the Party’s dwindling band of ideologues compared to opportunists’ preference for the status quo that has blocked political and structural reform in the past and may achieve this in the future. The state’s direct control of many large enterprises has been a lucrative source of unlawful income for enterprise supervisors and for central and local officials. Similar opportunities abound in the conversion of agricultural land to other uses or the preferential supply of services. Such influence will not be lightly surrendered.

Yet, the coming years are of critical importance in order to Vietnam’s aspirations to succeed in the global economy. It has a big but transient advantage: a hard-working, youthful and relatively low-cost workforce. It can benefit hugely from being the least developed member of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Currently, while trends are neutral to negative in additional East and Southeast Oriental nations, Vietnam will post much better than 6 percent GDP growth as well as nearly 10 percent export growth in 2015. Foreign investment is surging in from firms set on a piece of the TPP pie.

This offers an extraordinary opportunity to integrate Vietnamese businesses into value chains upstream from the final assembly operations that have so far been their role. Vietnam’s ‘industrial deepening’ will build confidence that at the next dip in the economic cycle, investors will not abandon Vietnam for that place with the currently least expensive wages.

To succeed as a reformer, Dung must pay particular attention to stimulating the actual domestic private sector. Maqui berry farmers should receive titles towards the fields they till. State enterprises that are both shattered and uncompetitive must be allowed to fail. None of this will fulfill the online dissidents or the Party’s ideologues, but the economic logic is persuasive. So is the political logic: decisive action will secure the Party’s command of Vietnam’s political heights for many years.

Is Vietnam on the cusp of change? is republished with permission through East Asia Forum