Vietnam's communists prepare for party congress

Vietnam's 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 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 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 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 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 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.