VietNamNet Bridge – Mr. Le Doan Hop, a member of the 9th and 10th Party Central Committee, a senior Party member with 45 years of membership, former Minister of Information and Communications, and Chairman of the Vietnam Communications and Digital Media Association, speaks with VietNamNet about his expectations for the 12th National Party Congress.

Former Minister Le Doan Hop.

Talking about the achievements, shortcomings and directions of the Party’s reform in the past 30 years, former Minister Le Doan Hop emphasized five achievements.

The most outstanding achievement that paved the way for all other relationships is the policy of diversification and multilateralization of international relations, particularly the establishment of cooperative relations with all the ruling parties in the world.

Vietnam has established diplomatic relations with 185 out of 195 UN member states; strategic partnership with 13 countries; and a comprehensive partnership with 11 countries (including five countries in the UN Security Council).

The second achievement is acceptance of the coexistence and development of various economic sectors, creating motivation for rapid and sustainable development for the country, especially the development of the corporate, household economy and private economy.

The third achievement is attracting investors from over 100 countries in the world, with the motto "more friends – less enemies".

This has helped to promote rapid and sustainable development in many fields such as infrastructure development (especially transportation, irrigation, electricity, communications, seaports, and airports), and urbanization closely tied to the development of industrial parks. Many areas saw the great development like telecommunications, aviation, information technology and others.

The fourth is multidimensional and deep international integration in various areas, from culture to sports, information, science and technology, economics, politics, security and defense.

And the fifth is the role and position of Vietnam in the world has increasingly improved in the international arena.

However, he also pointed out three weaknesses.

Vietnam has obtained great achievements after 30 years of renovation.

Vietnam has had good economic innovation but institutional and mechanism reform is still slow, which has hindered the country’s development, particularly reforms in the following fields: management of State-owned enterprises (SOEs), housing and land management, and management of mineral resources associated with environmental protection.

Reforms in the tasks of training, fostering and recruitment of key officials at all levels in the forms of running for election and competition has not been implemented widely.

We are not brave enough to be innovative in our thinking to compare ourselves to other countries to know where we are and what we should do to not lag behind other countries in the region and around the world in the age of globalisation.

Regarding the upcoming National Party Congress, former Minister Le Doan Hop said that the Party needs to promote national renovation associated with international integration, both focusing on economic and institutional reforms, developing the economy while defending national sovereignty and ensuring the ecological environment.

Politically, he outlined five basic points. It gradually shifted to a mechanism of choosing officials through the Party’s recommendations to a mechanism in which the Party leads election and examinations, and provides sufficient information on officials for the people to help them vote for the right persons who can serve the people and the country well.

Renovating the structure and criteria on selecting National Assembly deputies and People's Council at all levels is needed.

Expanding mass democracy and representation to exercise the democratic rights of the people in all areas, with economic and political areas as the focus, has great importance to knowledge and the media.

All fields should compare themselves to the world order to perceive and act soundly, through which they can make a shortcut to development and to catch up with developed countries in the world.

Heightening the role of supervision and criticism of the people so that the State will have enough information to do things right and to correct the fault quickly and seriously.

Therefore, the party and the state will win the people's trust and together build and defend the country, to turn Vietnam into a powerful, democratic and civilized nation, a reliable partner of the international community.

Economically, he said that Vietnam needs to comprehensively reform management mechanism of SOEs by focusing on the two breakthrough aspects: equitization and transformation, narrowing the governing function and increasing competence for enterprises in production and business autonomy.

Focusing on solving policy-related problems for businesses and the household economic sector to enable them to develop maximally is needed

The private economic sector is awaiting a clear message from the 12th Party Congress, to put in the right place their role, potential and advantages in the country’s economic and political life: "The private sector is one of the most important driving forces for the country’s development."

Reforming administrative procedures to serve the development of the production forces is also necessary. The State will only concentrate on 5 basic stages: planning, policy, training, audit and inspection to grant timely rewards and impose timely sanctions.

The people have high hope on the upcoming National Party Congress.

Continuing decentralization on the principle of anyone who receives enough information and takes responsibility most directly will have the priority to make decisions.

Through decentralization, implementation of a series of goals: reducing workload for superiors, increasing competence in raising the sense of initiative and creativity of subordinates so that they can speed up the working process because they don’t have to passively wait for the guidance of their superiors, and reducing negative phenomena and troublesome problems in duty performance.

Building a team of civil servants who can win the trust and admiration of the people, as those of Singapore.

Former Minister Le Doan Hop said that the essence of a ruling party is the policy, which is the doctrine, the guideline for unified awareness and action, especially a revolutionary and scientific party as our Party.

"I don’t see much breakthrough contents in the draft resolutions of the 12th Party Congress. Even the Resolution of the 11th Party Congress, after one term of implementation, shows some problems. For example, it pointed out the goal that by 2020 Vietnam will basically become an industrialized country. This goal is far from reality. We cannot achieve industrialization at all costs in a flat world. We have to find the true advantages of our country to successfully conduct industrialization," he stressed.

As such, Vietnam should focus on agriculture, rural industrialization and information technology.

He was also interested in social ethics.

"Our social ethics is seriously degrading and nobody points out the causes, the places and the addresses to effectively make good the damage. From my understanding, social morality are always dependent on the ethics of the ruling party. Is it true that one of the causes for social moral degradation is the moral degradation of some Party members? So the best way to improve social ethics is to improve the morals of Party members and officials, particularly the heads at all levels."

Le Doan Hop