Vietnam's ruling Communist Party is readying for its crucial five-yearly party congress starting tomorrow amid a sordid corruption scandal that has already claimed several government scalps.
Fighting graft will be key to defending the party's legitimacy, top party officials have conceded, as public anger has grown over revelations that corrupt transport ministry cadres embezzled millions of dollars.
"The congress is going to be overshadowed by the issue of corruption," said Martin Gainsborough, a Vietnam expert at Britain's Bristol University, speaking ahead of the April 18-25 event. "We have a situation that demands a clear and convincing response from the top."
The talk on the street may be about graft and impunity, but the Soviet-style congress will follow long-established rules that stress stability and continuity in one of the world's five remaining communist countries.
Red banners over Hanoi's streets welcome nearly 1,200 party delegates to the event that will set the political and economic course of the nation of 83 million people until 2010.
Delegates representing 3.1 million party members will recommit to Marxism-Leninism, Ho Chi Minh Thought and 20-year-old Doi Moi (renewal) reforms toward a "market economy with socialist orientation."
Backroom brawls may have raged between reformers and hardliners, and between factions that advocate closer ties with China or the US.
But outwardly the party that stresses consensus is unlikely to announce radical shifts in direction.
"There will be no major change in policy," said Phan Dien, permanent secretary of the party's central committee.
He said, however, that "the upcoming central committee and politburo will be subject to a lot of changes" when party members choose the new 160-member committee and the elite politburo with at least 15 members.
Prime Minister Phan Van Khai and President Tran Duc Luong may leave the politburo, meaning they would retire from their government posts next year, analysts say, and there is speculation on whether General Secretary Nong Duc Manh will stay in Vietnam's most powerful post.
But even seasoned Vietnam watchers have shied away from predicting personnel changes amid the country's worst post-war corruption scandal.
Early this month Transport Minister Dao Dinh Binh resigned and his deputy was jailed over revelations officials in the ministry's Project Management Unit 18 (PMU18) fleeced funds earmarked for highways and other infrastructure.
The scandal broke in January with the arrest of PMU18 head Bui Tien Dung for betting US$7 million, much of it from Japan and the World Bank, on European football matches.
The affair has since become a can of worms that has implicated figures in the top echelons of the party.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese