VietNamNet Bridge – Vice Chairman of the NA Committee on Culture, Education, Youth and Children Le Nhu Tien spoke to Dai Doan Ket (Great Unity) Newspaper about progress on corruption prevention and control.

What is your opinion about the Government's efforts to curb corruption?

We now have a clear legal foundation for corruption prevention and control: the amended Law on Corruption Prevention and Control. Many of the Party and State's documents have also addressed this issue. We have many levels of corruption fighting agencies, both at the national and local level. Therefore, we have a complete foundation for corruption fighting. What matters now is how we implement all these policies.

Despite the fact that we have all the necessary legal documents, the issuance of instructions for the implementation of these documents is slow and so are relevant agencies.

The Party has determined to curb corruption and emphasised this point at the 11th National Congress. However, the result did not meet expectations. Why?

The amended Law on Corruption Prevention and Control states that the agencies assigned to issue the law implementation instructions have to take responsibility for slow implementation. Slow implementation means those agencies have not fulfilled their tasks in providing instructions and guidance for enforcing the law.

Supervision is an important measure to uncover corruption, but the responsibilities of supervision agencies at different levels have not yet been made clear. What do you think about that?

Currently we lack detailed regulations on the responsibilities of relevant agencies. The Government Inspectorate has to make clear the responsibilities of each agency and individual. We also lack detailed regulations for protecting people who speak out about corruption.

It will be quite difficult to fight corruption if we lack synchronised documents.

We have regulations on officials' asset listings, but this information is not public. So what's the meaning of these regulations?

Moreover, we have not been able to supervise people's assets. Officials may have a lot of assets but they can also transfer the ownership to their relatives and avoid responsibility. I think we need to address this.

Regarding those who try to "grab" everything before they retire, we need to have specific regulations. We need to have a mechanism that allows retroactivity in order to target those who commit violations before retiring. So I think those who have retired should also have to list their assets publicly.

What do you think about an independent supervision agency?

We need an independent inspection agency for corruption crimes. Currently the inspection agency is concerned with all kinds of crimes. In my opinion, the National Committee on Corruption Prevention and Control is only a mechanism. We don't have an elite group of individuals who can assist the Steering Committee in fulfilling their tasks.

Source: VNS