Discussing the draft law on implementation of democracy at the grassroots level on June 14, National Assembly deputy Hoang Van Cuong said that if reviewing the corruption cases recently, one can see that the purposes of the law are reasonable. If grassroots democracy is implemented well, violations will not be so serious.

“In the case of the Viet A test kit scandal, for example, if grassroots democracy had been implemented, information about prices at which the state had to buy test kits from Viet A would have been made public, and if customs agencies had informed people about monthly imports of Viet A, and that the cost of Viet A imported test kits were just $0.955, provincial CDCs would not have had to buy test kits at such high prices,” he said. 

The case related to former Hanoi Mayor Nguyen Duc Chung is another example. If people had been informed about which chemicals were needed to treat the polluted lake, where the chemicals were bought, and who supplied the chemicals to the city, the violations would have been found sooner (the case occurred in 2016 but only in 2020 was the violation found). 

The corruption cases related to public asset procurement discovered recently have common characteristics. The procurements all strictly followed procedures, but they were not made public. “If people had known about the procurements and supervised the implementation, the corruption cases would have been prevented,” he said.

The goal is that citizens' power is guaranteed, publicity and transparency are ensured, and accountability is promoted. 

He made two proposals related to publicity and transparency.

First, the principle is that everything related to public resources and people will be made public, except state secrets. There is no need to clearly stipulate which matters can be made public.

Second, it would be better not to specify the channels for information exposure. It would be better if just stipulating that agencies need to be sure that a certain proportion of people, 50 percent, for example, know the information.

Dong Nai’s deputy Trinh Xuan An expressed his concern about people’s inspection. “I find that people’s inspection is an extremely formal institution and we seem to have neglected this institution in the Law on Inspection for a long time. I don’t know who the head of people’s inspection division of the Office of the National Assembly is,” he said.

“At the grassroots level, we have people’s councils which implement the function of supervision. We also have people’s inspection and the unit that supervises capital construction. Is it necessary to have so many agencies performing supervision and inspection functions?” he said.

Thu Hang - Tran Thuong