David Koh. Contemporary Southeast Asia. Volume 23, Issue 3, December 2001.
The two most important domestic political events in Vietnam in 2001, the Ninth Party National Congress and the Central Highlands unrest, reveal to observers a divided Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP), and a Parkinson’s diseased state. Political struggle among the leadership has bred incohesiveness within the VCP and the state. It has diverted attention and resources away from the task of good governance. The first part of this article maps the political struggle among the key leaders at the Ninth Congress and examines its major implications. The second part examines the Central Highlands unrest and argues that the fundamental problems associated with it are the lack of a practical land regime as well as the inability of the party-state to control its bureaucracy
Introduction
In its Annual Report on Human Rights, the U.S. State Department cited Vietnam as a country that lacks certain human rights, such as freedom of press and freedom of speech. It noted:
The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is a one-party state, ruled and controlled by the Vietnamese Communist Party. The [VCP’s] constitutionally mandated leading role and the occupancy of all senior government positions by party members ensure the primacy of the party. Politburo guidelines enable the Party to set the broad parameters of national policy.
These observations, which are more or less repeated every year by the U.S. State Department, impress on the reader an omnipotent and extremely powerful communist party and state. The U.S. State Department is not alone in this portrayal of Vietnam. Another recent report says that Vietnam is an “old-style communist state.” What does that mean? Wire services, while reporting on the latest developments in Vietnam, invariably never fail to mention that Vietnam is a communist state and that the Vietnamese-Communist Party (VCP) holds all the levers of power. Individuals and opposition towards the VCP outside Vietnam also lose some credibility when they deliberately portray an unfavourable image of Vietnam. They cast Vietnam as a country that has an imposing political party flexing its muscles at will and achieving its goals at ease.
People who uncritically accept the popular images forget that in human affairs disagreement and discord are unavoidable. The written rules of politics in Vietnam that provide the legal framework are authoritarian, but the unwritten rules of elite politics are pluralistic. The unwritten rules are anachronistic to the image of unity that the country’s officials and media try to portray. The pluralistic tendency under an umbrella of authoritarianism began after the second Indochina War ended in 1975. Dissension and differences in opinion over foreign policy and economic development policies broke out, much of it in the aftermath of economic failure or stagnation as a result of applying orthodox ideas to policies. Opponents of orthodoxy argued for more pragmatic solutions and regimes of socio-economic governance. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, there were continuing and fundamental leadership differences on the issue of the extent to which ideology should give way to pragmatism even though the former is becoming less relevant in guiding economic policy. As late as August 2001, at the Third Plenum (meeting) of the Ninth Central Committee, the leadership declared that: “the state sector of the economy (in which state enterprises are the main pillars) shall occupy a leading role and this role is closely associated with the country’s move towards socialism and stable economic and social development”.
As a balance to this, the reformists within the VCP managed to secure a commitment to re-evaluate and reform the activities and management of state enterprises. Thus, the stalemate continues. Given this constant debate and schizophrenia within the Party, the VCP cannot be expected to be cohesive on all matters.
Similarly, the state of Vietnam is controlled and influenced by many forces that pull it in different directions, although the VCP is the leading influence. This has an impact on how effective the party-state is in controlling society, and how fast the country is able to develop economically. Adam Fforde and Stefan de Vylder have compared Vietnam’s pace to that of a “tiger on a bicycle”. The taken-for-granted association between the communist label and the human rights record, on the one hand, and the substance and effectiveness of governance, on the other, needs to be examined carefully. Vietnam is a communist country, but its badge says little about how internal political processes can alter that character.
Closer and deeper examination of the dynamics of politics and governance in Vietnam would reveal a more nuanced picture of the country. Since the early 1980s, the authorities have become more willing to let foreign scholars into the country and live with ordinary Vietnamese to conduct research. Scholars have also been able to use the country’s libraries and archives, although, as is the practice in many other countries, access to some archives is still restricted.
With the benefit of access since the early 1980s, scholars who study Vietnam have been painting a more nuanced picture of just how strong the communist party-state is. Scholarly views today would neither say that the VCP has absolute control over society, nor that Vietnamese society enjoys freedom and there is no heavy hand of the VCP. Instead, scholars admit to different degrees of freedom on the part of the Vietnamese people to manoeuvre around the party-state so as to create space for themselves. Their differences in views seem to be dictated by the arena under examination. There are scholars who examine the areas in which the party-state requires absolute or strong controls, and is able to achieve it, such as the media, policy-making, elections, and ritual space before reforms, just to name a few examples. These same authors, however, would also point to leakages in such controls. On the other hand, scholars who examine arenas where people’s negotiation of the regime of the party-state is pervasive would precede their analysis with recognition of the exclusive law-making and policy implementation powers of the party-state. However, their main thrust would be that the VCP often finds itself in a wide ravine between ideology on one cliff and reality, as practised by the people, on the other cliff. On many policies, the party-state has had to follow the lead of the people in order to bridge the ravine for the safe crossing of ideology. These policies would include, among others, those on urbanization, agricultural co-operativization, and residence registration and population migration. This party-state certainly does not have everything its way and has had to concede to the disorganized demands of society in not a few arenas.
The lack of cohesiveness is a major factor for the party-state’s mixed ability in controlling and directing society. The VCP consists of not one but many groups or “factions” jockeying for power and other interests. This struggle impacts on the party’s ability to achieve consensus. This lack of clear direction allows everybody to use ideological abstractions to attack other factions in various power struggles. For instance, the Seventh Party National Congress in 1991 saw the re-emergence of conservatism caused by fears for the safety of the VCP, after the Eastern European communist regimes collapsed. Since the late 1980s, conservatives (either bona fide ones or opportunists) have used this fear to secure power and position. The VCP then elected Do Muoi, thought to be a hardliner, as General Secretary. After he secured the post, however, Do Muoi presided over the longest period of high economic growth, the best since 1954, in part because he moved beyond his conservative stereotype to encourage private businesses and foreign investments. In contrast, fifteen years before, Do Muoi had overseen the reform of private businesses and the economy according to socialist principles in Ho Chi Minh City, a few years after the city was liberated. If Do Muoi is considered a typical example of a mixed conservative reformer, then fixing labels such as “conservative” or “reformer” on leaders is no easy task, and will produce inconsistencies.
The memoirs of Tran Do, a former Central Committee member, is instructive of how ideology can be a powerful device. Tran Do gave an account of how he was ejected from his post as head of the VCP’s Culture Commission. It was in part caused by otherwise amiable colleagues who, in jockeying for positions when the Fifth Congress in 1982 was approaching, accused him of being inconsistent in his ideological orientation. In other words, his loyalty to the party was suspect, although he had been a general in the army during the war against the United States. Tran Do made a comeback at the Sixth Party National Congress in 1986, when the general mood of reforms was current. However, the return of conservatism in the late 1980s (as change began to take place in Eastern Europe) stunted his momentum. Tran Do lost his post again in 1988. This swing of the pendulum also had an impact on socio-economic activities.
The Vietnamese state apparatus is huge and pervasive, but management problems plague it almost like Parkinson’s disease. The brain, located in Hanoi, is not always in effective control of the movements of its parts throughout the whole country. The machinery is incompetent and corrupt and often responds more to local or personal interests than to what the party-state says or the law dictates.
The Ninth Party Congress, held in April 2001, and the Central Highlands unrest are symbolic of a divided party and a Parkinson’s diseased state. At the Ninth Party Congress, there was little debate on ideology or policy, as one would expect of a landmark event that is held only once every five years to set down policy directions. Instead, the centre of attention was the infighting among the top leadership. The atmosphere was so divisive that it moved long-retired General Vo Nguyen Giap to write a letter to the Central Committee to ask various factions to stop bickering on the leadership issue. The Central Highlands unrest also showed that, as with many other unrests during the last decade, the party-state does not always have effective control and direction of all its constituent parts.
The Ninth Party Congress
The Ninth Party National Congress of the VGP saw the baton of leadership pass to the third generation of leaders since the founding of the party in 1930. Formally, the selection of the top leaders and the General Secretary is governed by party rules. The Congress is attended by provincial and sectoral party delegates, from which the Central Committee members are selected. The Central Committee then elects the Politburo. Within the Politburo, the General Secretary is selected by a majority of votes.
That, at least, is supposed to be the practice. However, the actual process is just the reverse. Members of the Politburo decide among themselves who should remain in the Politburo. The Politburo designate then decides on the name list for the next Central Committee, taking into account the representations from different sectors and different groups of alliances. By the time the Congress opens, therefore, the name lists of the Central Committee and the Politburo would have been more or less fixed.
This seemingly orderly, top-down process is usually distorted by competition among groups. One often-repeated explanation is that the leaders are neatly divided into factions, with each faction representing an ideological stronghold but none of them deviating from the official umbrella ideology of Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought. Groups said to be in competition include reformers, conservatives, the balancers (the in-betweens), opportunists, the military, and individuals in the economic ministries. During much of the Cold War, pro-Soviet and pro-China factions were also supposed to have contended with each other in determining policies.
The factional explanation overlaps with the “sector as faction” interpretation which sees all factions getting some level of interest representation. It has been a long-term practice, put in place by Ho Chi Minh’s advice of “Great Solidarity” (Dai doan ket), that Central Committee members must be selected from diverse sectors of society. These sectors include the military, the trade unions, and women groups. Each sector would have a quota. The share of seats of each sector is often indicative of the relative importance of each sector and hence faction. For instance, at the Fourth Party Congress in 1976, workers were given a larger quota during a period of expected development towards socialism. At the Fifth Party Congress in 1982, the percentage of Central Committee seats reserved for the military increased because of the importance of the armed forces in the China—Vietnam border war. Since the Sixth Party Congress in 1986, when doi moi (renovation) began, more seats on elected party and state bodies ha ve been given to intellectuals. At the Ninth Party Congress in 2001, the VCP wanted more women and youth sector members elected to the Central Committee. In other words, changes in sectoral shares may reflect the priorities, ideological or current, of the leadership, comprising the Central Committee as the outer core and the Politburo as the inner core.
A third interpretation is that the leaders are divided according to their regional, geographical origins, broadly falling into southern, central, and northern camps. This formula has been used for the distribution of the three top posts of the country (State President, Party General Secretary, and Prime Minister) since doi moi. For instance, the Seventh Party National Congress in 1991 distributed the three seats geographically — one from central (Le Duc Anh), another from the north (Do Muoi), and yet another from the south (Vo Van Kiet). At the Eighth Party National Congress in 1996, this set of leaders from three different regions stayed on. At the mid-term Special Congress in late 1997, a central-north-south set of leaders replaced the above three; they were Tran Duc Luong, Le Kha Phieu, and Phan Van Khai respectively. As was the case at the Seventh Congress, the three top leaders stepping down were co-opted into the Board of Advisors to the Central Committee. This three-region formula was also used for the Ninth Party Congress for the selection of the top three leaders.
Another less talked about but important interpretation is that economic interests drive the competition for leadership positions and shape the composition of factions. However, insufficient data do not allow for a detailed analysis of this interpretation.
The question then arises: which is the most apt interpretation? Is an official elected because of his sector, or his regional affiliation, or his interest group? This is a difficult question to answer. Ideology, friendships, regional affiliations, economic interests, personalities, and loyalty to groups do count, but there are no fixed rules or fixed groups. What is certain is that once every five years, members of the Politburo have to face a complex distribution matrix comprising the elements above to decide among themselves who will occupy seats in the two highest tiers of political power in Vietnam. This need for balance among groups has been conditioned historically, as different groups evoke Ho Chi Minh’s teachings. This makes it difficult for a strong leader to rise because multiple groups can ally to unseat the leader (as seen at the Ninth Party National Congress). A leader who wants a smooth term would find it difficult to press for radical and quick changes and would want to avoid stepping on too many toes. This is an important dynamic in the leadership selection process.
Breakdown of the Anh-Phieu Alliance and the Race at the Ninth Congress
At the Ninth Congress held in April 2001, an alliance of all groups removed the much-disliked Le Kha Phieu as General Secretary. The Board of Advisers, comprising the three party elders, Do Muoi, Le Duc Anh, and Vo Van Kiet, led the opposition to Phieu. The Advisers were, of course, not in the running for the top post themselves, but they were bent on removing the incumbent. What was significant was that Le Duc Anh had been Phieu’s patron. What led to the break-up of the Anh Phieu alliance that in 1998 allowed Phieu to out-manoeuvre Nguyen Van An for the top party, and the most powerful, post in Vietnam?
Perhaps an understanding of how the Anh-Phieu alliance came into being would be useful. Phieu was only a colonel stationed in Binh Tri Thien province. He was sent to Cambodia under the guidance of Le Duc Anh, then the most senior commander of Vietnam’s campaign in Cambodia. Phieu eventually became the Political Commissar of the armed forces. At the Eighth Party National Congress in 1996, Phieu was elevated to the fifth-ranking position in the Politburo, on a recommendation from Anh. At the mid-term review of the Congress of the Party in late 1997, the Politburo picked Phieu over Manh and Nguyen Van An, the two top competing Politburo members who were also from the north, to succeed Do Muoi as Party General Secretary. Given the Anh-Muoi alliance as well, Phieu’s rise was meant to protect the two elders’ interests from attack when they retired.
If Le Duc Anh were to be asked today about the rise of Phieu, he might admit that it was a mistake. In 2000, Phieu suggested that the Party should do away with the Board of Advisers, from where Le Duc Anh (and his two colleagues) was still exerting influence. The reason for this was because from the end of 1997 when he became General Secretary, the Board of Advisers had allegedly interfered in a number of major decisions of the Party and the government. This was probably Phieu’s reason for wanting to abolish the Board of Advisers.
The Board’s opposition was insufficient to remove Phieu because the Politburo’s vote was essential. Thus, in October 2000 the Advisers wrote a joint letter to the Politburo to denounce Phieu. This letter would also not have brought Phieu down if not for the fact that its accusations had substance. Phieu did not have good relations with the Politburo members. He reputedly used the intelligence service to spy on other members. Phieu also made many concessions to China in negotiations on the land border treaty. The territory lost was said to be equivalent to the area of Thai Binh province in northern Vietnam. Moreover, Phieu could not make much headway on state enterprise reform.
Phieu had also not endeared himself to the public, and his performance left much to be desired. For example, during the visit of President Bill Clinton in November 2000, at a speech at the National University of Hanoi, Phieu read a litany of the sins of capitalism, to which President Clinton appropriately provided a rebuttal. The lecturing, “old-socialism” attitude that Phieu adopted contrasted sharply with the warm reception that Clinton received from ordinary Vietnamese on the streets. Two months later, at the seventieth Party anniversary in February 2001, Phieu gave a lacklustre and orthodox speech on socialism and imperialism that disappointed many Vietnamese, who were generally forward-looking and pragmatic.
Support for Phieu plummetted. A few months before the Congress, he reportedly received only one vote in the Politburo during a confidence motion on his re-election. That lone vote was assumed to be Phieu’s own. It was significant that even the other members of the Politburo who were from the armed forces did not vote for him. In short, the going for Phieu had been difficult and his various mistakes and attempts at outflanking those who had helped to elevate him made them ally against him. It did not help that Phieu’s style was abrasive and carried suggestions of an emerging strongman, a taboo for a political culture more used to unity and consensus in intra-elite relationships. In the end, the ground under Phieu collapsed. He was not even elected to the new Central Committee. Phieu is unlikely to make a comeback, not least because age would count against him.
Implications of the Congress Results
As successor to Phieu as General Secretary, Nong Duc Manh has enjoyed a reservoir of goodwill within the country. There are several reasons for this. First, Manh has a good track record after two terms as Chairman of the National Assembly. Under his chairmanship, the National Assembly passed more laws than during any other period, a significant achievement for a country that has been well known for its lack of laws. Enforcement, however, is another matter (enforcement was not under Manh’s portfolio but was the responsibility of the executive arm of the state). Manh had also in the last two years of his chairmanship promoted more accountability in the National Assembly. Government ministers must now prepare well for questioning by the National Assembly. In 2000, several ministers, including the Education Minister and the Minister for Government Organization and Personnel, had to apologize to the National Assembly for their departments’ shortcomings. Manh’s role has been in allowing the gruelling questioning an d television stations to broadcast parliamentary proceedings live to the nation. Probably for this reason, Manh has been cast by the foreign media as a reformer. He also has a reputation for being incorruptible.
While Manh occupies the top position in leadership, there are constraints on his freedom to act, which also applied to his predecessor. Furthermore, Manh is a product of a system that has not rejected ideology, used for the legitimation of the monopoly of political power by the VCP. Working against this ideology in too strong and rapid a fashion might provide political rivals with ammunition. Perhaps this is the reason why Manh has been moving cautiously. In the six months after the Ninth Party National Congress, a tighter, more restrictive social atmosphere has been in evidence. There is no severe clampdown on space for society, but there has also been no further liberalization either.
Obstacles to Reforms?
Some observers have said that there is hope for reforms, as seen in the leadership changes, because the number of military members in the Politburo has decreased from three to one. Observers construe this as indicating the military as the loser in the leadership struggle, epitomized by Le Kha Phieu’s departure. The military is usually a conservative voice where maintaining socialist ideology is concerned. This is the reason why some observers think that a loss by the military is a gain for the reformers.
One can interpret these events differently. Certainly, the military has seen its fortunes decline. It has made several significant mistakes recently. One was the failure to detect the incident during the visit of President Clinton when an overseas Vietnamese from the United States flew a private airplane over Ho Chi Minh City and called for the overthrow of the VCP. This was a big affront to the communist leadership.
An examination of the composition of the new Central Committee after the Congress indicates that the number of military members has not decreased significantly, declining only from sixteen to fourteen. It is only a loss of two, and the top brass of the military have all been elected. They include all the most senior officers in the Ministry of Defence, the armed forces, and the commanders of the more important military regions. If we consider the whole military-security set-up as one, including the military and police in the same camp with a collective conservative voice, then there is no change in the number of their Central Committee members — nineteen in total. At the Eighth Congress, the military had sixteen members and the police three, while at the Ninth Congress, the military had fourteen members, and the police five. The ability of the military, on its own, to retain its influence should be seen in the context of the total number of Central Committee members, which decreased from 170 at the Eighth Congress to 150 at the Ninth Congress. Therefore, in relative terms, the military-security camp has become a larger bloc. Moreover, it needs to be borne in mind that every Central Committee member qualifies to become a Politburo member in the future. While the military members of the Politburo are not high in political ranking now, this does not mean that the military will not be able to put forward a credible candidate in the future. What is certain is that the influence of the military-security complex within the top leadership is likely to stay. The military is, however, not the only voice that the top leadership would have to consider when determining economic and social policies. The military-security complex would arguably be more important when it comes to political and social policies, but less so in economic policies. On the other hand, the military is not necessarily opposed to reforms where it is in its interests, and thus it should not be seen as a purely conservative voice. For instance, the military enthusiastically started the second telecommunications company in Vietnam in 2000 to compete with the existing state monopoly, Viet Nam Telecoms.
The Ninth Congress, while not discussing or debating economic policy directions for the country, did nevertheless reaffirm the fundamental economic policy direction laid down at the Sixth and Seventh Congresses — that is, Vietnam has a “commodity-based multi-sector economy”. This basically means that despite the Marxist-Leninist ideology, it does not matter to the state whether you are red or blue in your ideology, so long as you make a living within the ambit of the law. Thus, there is continuity. One year before the Ninth Congress, a further shift towards this emphasis on growth was already in sight when the National Assembly revised the Enterprise Law in early 2000. The revisions made it much easier for ordinary Vietnamese to start private businesses, by removing cumbersome bureaucratic procedures that had become a means of official corruption. Promises have been made to make the playing field a level one for domestic enterprises where bank loans are concerned. These revisions of the Enterprise Law appear to have had some impact. More than 12,000 new private enterprises registered for business in the succeeding twelve months. It created some expectations, but much remains to be done.
At the Ninth Congress, it was recognized that the government needed to put in place a more coordinated strategy of economic reforms rather than approach reforms in a piecemeal fashion. This means recognizing that a slew of measures has to be put in place at the same time in order that individual measures can have an impact. For instance, it is difficult to try to kick-start a stock market when the mobilization and movement of funds are subjected to intensive state scrutiny. Such scrutiny has driven billions of dollars out of the banking system. It has also created a huge informal economy so that people could avoid detection as well as taxes. Tax evasion is pervasive because people feel that taxes are high and that they get nothing in return from the state that is of value. Much economic activity and transactions, therefore, prefer the cover of darkness, and thus much money will remain immobilized outside the formal economy while the banking system suffers from lack of funds to loan. This is a vicious cycle that the Vietnamese leadership is trying to break via a coordinated strategy to formalize the economy.
On the other hand, for continuity in economic policy there is a need to address the conservative side of opinion within the leadership and groups of party members who, for political reasons, rally to that opinion. To appease these groups, the Ninth Congress affirmed the dominant role of the state in the economy. This basically means that state companies running on state funds will continue to exist, although their numbers will decrease in the future, but they would be subject to more rigorous audits on operations and accounts. This middle-road between the ideologues and the reformers was re-emphasized at the Third Plenum of the Ninth Central Committee. While confirming that there would be more checks on the operations and books of state enterprises, the Third Plenum also affirmed that the state would protect a few strategic industries by retaining control of them. The use of the word “dominant” and the idea of protection of strategic industries are a step down and a more nuanced strategy compared with that of the previous Congress in 1996 when some delegates attempted to fix the state’s share of the economy’s output at 65 per cent. That pro-state sentiment was ignored because the more urgent problem was not the ownership but to limit the effects of a severe fall in foreign investments, as the Asian financial crisis had reduced those investments by half. The results of the Third Plenum held in 2001, however, show that the prostate faction has been ignored but not rejected or driven out of leadership considerations. In the foreseeable future, the direction of economic policy will muddle through on this middle road.
The Central Highlands Unrest and Its Causes
In early February 2001, a series of protests in Pleiku, Gia Lai province, rocked the country. According to foreign press sources as well as official reports, anywhere from dozens to thousands of protestors surrounded the Gia Lai provincial people’s committee office in Pleiku during the first weekend of February. Protests also took place in Buon Me Thuot, in the neighbouring Dac Lac province. While it was not known at the time of the unrest, protests also took place simultaneously in several districts of neighbouring Kon Tum province, a fact revealed only much later. In Pleiku, protestors encountered police blockades and clashes occurred, leading to injuries and about twenty arrests. Also significant was the fact that protests in Gia Lai province were not limited to the provincial authorities’ office. Rural districts also saw a number of protests. Because the protests in the three provinces were well co-ordinated, it led to suspicions by the Vietnamese Government that people inside and outside Vietnam had instigated the protests and were intending to use it to topple the regime in those provinces.
The immediate spark for the unrest in Gia Lai, however, was the arrest and torture of two Christians belonging to the ethnic minority for setting up worship houses within their homes. Having a place of worship without a licence is illegal under the law, but torture is a more serious crime. Others in the community, presumably Christian as well, petitioned the district authority for the release of the two arrested. When the request was turned down, they planned to march to the provincial authority to petition their case. The provincial authority learnt of the plan and set up anti-riot barriers to keep order. Emotions boiled over and the protestors clashed with the police.
The unrest was violent and serious. As the protests spread, the Vietnamese army was put on alert, called in reinforcements, and banned foreigners and visitors to the three provinces. The U.S. Embassy issued a travel advisory to its citizens. Moreover, given that the Ninth Congress was approaching in a few months, the security services swung into action to deal with the unrest and the ring-leaders fomenting it. When Manh, an ethnic minority, was elevated to the top party post, some observers felt that it was a gesture by the party to show it valued minorities. This view ignores the fact that Manh had been the contender for the post since 1996.
Some of the issues that allegedly gave rise to the Central Highlands unrest included:
- Land use issues combined with local officials’ corruption;
- Religious suppression; and
- A combination of the above leading to aspirations and a movement for autonomy/secession of the Central Highlands ethnic minorities.
Up to now, it is still not clear if the secession movement was serious and organized, even though the unrest had been linked to the FULRO (United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races) now in exile in the United States. Perhaps, for this reason, the Vietnamese Government saw the dark hand of the United States. FULRO denied that it had organized the unrest. To add weight to the suspicion, Washington allowed some of the protestors who had escaped to Cambodia to go to the United States as refugees. During the unrest, then U.S. Ambassador, Pete Peterson, requested to visit the troubled areas, but was told to stay out of the affair. In any case, the link between the FULRO movement and the ethnic unrest is tenuous. As for religious suppression, the VCP has always viewed religion as a sensitive matter and a potential political rival for mass support. Its view has been shaped by how religion had contributed to the delegitimation of the South Vietnamese regime during the Vietnam War. Thus, the VCP has always wan ted the state to have full control over religion. The party-state has sponsored the establishment of national religious organizations and has been using them to prevent religion from becoming a formidable political challenger. In such a sensitive arena, any attempts by Vietnamese citizens to establish a different church or religious organization — whether ethnic minorities or not — would be seen as a challenge to the authority and power of the regime. It should expect to be met with the full force of the party-state political, security, and administrative apparatus. The party-state has successfully kept religion under control and therefore religious suppression may not be the key issue in the Central Highlands unrest, although many of the ethnic minorities are Christians, and the immediate spark was a religious issue.
However, the most important issue is conflicting land regimes and local officials’ corruption in leasing land.
Conflicting Land Regimes
The Constitution of Vietnam does not delineate special areas reserved for ethnic minorities, whereas ethnic minorities’ special uses of the land they traditionally occupy do not amount to land ownership recognized by the land law and the Constitution. Other parts of the Constitution and law stipulate respect for ethnic minorities’ customs and way of life, but this cannot be construed to mean that land on which minorities live would be preserved only for their use. Thus, a legal red tape is embedded in the triangular relationship between three players — ethnic minorities, the settlers from the lowlands, and the state.
For many years, vast tracts of fallow land have enticed lowlanders to migrate to the highlands. That movement has reduced land use pressures in the lowlands but has affected the lifestyle of highland minorities. In particular, highland minorities are engaged in shifting cultivation, and naturally, with settled cultivation which lowlanders practise, the remaining land available to ethnic minorities for shifting cultivation has become smaller. This migration did not begin under communist rule. It began during the French colonial period and it continued throughout the twentieth century. Under communist rule, all land is state property and this prohibits private ownership of land, although people can still lease land. Internal migration used to require regime permission, and the rules were enforced relatively strictly in the past. After 1975, there has been evidence of much state-sanctioned and organized migration to the Central Highlands. This was done in good faith to reduce land pressure in the delta. There is also evidence that ethnic minorities respect the state’s authority to make these migration decisions in that context. The ethnic minorities, however, could not accept the fact that the local authorities profited from the migration policy by leasing out more land than they should have, and then pocketing the extra income. Some of the land leased to settlers was considered by the ethnic minorities to belong to the traditionally recognized area for shifting cultivation. Over time, potentially explosive land-use disputes were not resolved either by the law, or by compromise, or by checks on local officials by the central authority in Hanoi. Thus, the Central Highlands unrest occurred.
It is important to place the land issue in the wider context, because what happened in the Central Highlands can happen anywhere else in Vietnam. Land use conflicts are very common in Vietnam. The land regime disallows private ownership and does not recognize a free market for the ownership of land, but in actual fact people can trade the right to use land, which is as good as ownership of land. Local authorities are tasked to approve land use applications and land use right transfers, but they have also participated in this market by being middlemen in transactions between individuals as well as leasing out state land, thereby reaping handsome rewards. In many instances, such leases have involved land under dispute. All over the country, land disputes have become the biggest grievance which people have against local officials.
The Central Highlands unrest was a situation of local dynamics affecting national politics. Local officials’ corruption stoked passions against the central state, as local officials were seen as agents of the state and there was little differentiation between where the officials came from. While the local officials exploited their position to profit from land sales, the ethnic minorities saw this as the fault of the central authority in Hanoi in allowing such a practice, which at the same time was seen as eroding customs and practices. A dangerous ethnic dimension was thus added to the sensitive issue of livelihood.
The Central Highlands unrest was not the first rural unrest in Vietnam under any regime, and it will not be the last under communist rule. During the past decade or so, a number of peasant protests have taken place, being mainly caused by rural restlessness against local officials’ abuse of power and privileges as well as high taxes and other collections. The better known ones in recent years were those in Thai Binh in 1997 and Nam Dinh in 2000. Where the local population is sufficiently aggrieved by such corruption concentrated in a small localized area, the potential for unrest exists if appeals to right the wrongs are ignored by the local authorities and those immediately above them. Imagine if these protests were to occur concurrently and on a bigger scale. The political and security structures may not be able to prevent a snowball effect. The local corruption issue can therefore develop into a regime security issue, given the right timing and conditions. In Vietnam, local politics can occupy a key role i n regime stability.
Efforts to Reduce Rural Restlessness
During the past ten years, the Vietnamese Government has implemented local administration reforms, but they have been limited. It is not easy to remove corrupt local officials, and even if officials are removed they often make a comeback in another position or in another locality, largely as a result of their patrons. Local elections are held only in name because the nominees have to be approved by the local party organ and the slate is limited. Party credentials or trust are minimum requirements, but personal relationships with the local leaders are more crucial for securing executive appointments. Changes to the local administration system since 1986 have gone in the way of more equality in sharing the jobs of local leadership, but only among the same group of elite party officials within localities. For instance, in 1989, the revised local authority law gave a larger role to the Fatherland Front. The Front is a solidarity movement that includes all political and social movements and organizations as m embers. That role, however, was mostly consultative and one could certainly say that the Fatherland Front is the Communist Party in disguise because all its important officials are party members. Party officials who have good relationships with one another and share in the same interests basically still dictate events in every locality. The next major reform was the Grassroots Democracy Regulations, put in place in 1997 after the unrest in Thai Binh province. However, those regulations only increased electors’ ability to recall local elected officials on petty financial matters, while the powers of dismissal, appointment, and nomination for elections still remain in the hands of local party bosses.
The seriousness of local officials’ incompetence and abuse of power and the shocks they can administer to the legitimacy of the central government have made the latter sit up and pay attention. From September 2000 to early 2001, the central government sent seven ministerial delegations to the provinces to resolve long-standing cases of land disputes, most of which involved either local officials’ abuse of power or incompetence. The decision to send these teams was made suddenly and seemed partly influenced by the approaching Ninth Party Congress. The disputes had also become intractable. In many cases, local authorities had simply ignored central government directives to resolve the disputes, manifesting the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.
Conclusion
If unity and heroism had defined Vietnam at war, then divisions and ineffectiveness now define Vietnam at peace. Post-war Vietnam has seen the regularization of not only politics but also individuals’ political behaviour and motivation. This mirrors the retreat of nationalism and ideology that had motivated people to unquestioningly make sacrifices for the country during war. While leaders are always expected to jostle for power, now they increasingly show and sow disunity among their ranks. This disunity is also seen in protracted debates and uncertainties regarding ideological directions and what needs to be done. This delay in resolving the ideological — but politically sacrosanct — obstacle has serious consequences; at the very worst, ideology has become a power device. As a result, Vietnam is tied down to ideological baggage, which makes radical and quick change impossible. In turn, this impacts on the bureaucracy and law-making, which gives rise to situations such as the Central Highlands unrest which are fuelled by a combination of unsuitable laws of a past age when ideology was more relevant and a corrupt and incompetent bureaucracy.