"Viet Nam is a country, not a war" Le Van Bang reminded the assembled press the day of the opening of a Vietnamese Liaison Office in Washington DC at the beginning of 1995. He was trying to turn the attention of the American public away from the past and to obtain for the Vietnamese Communist Party (known under its French acronym, PCV) the financial assistance it desperately needed. A few months later, in March, at a seminar sponsored by Columbia University, Bang admitted that had it not been for the introduction of the plan for economic renovation (Doi Moi), Marxism would not have lasted in Vietnam.

The country’s woes, coupled with the Asian crisis, have forced the PCV to hold an emergency plenary meeting on October 13 this year, but the meeting took place amidst public indifference. Within the party, the reformists and the conservatives are at daggers drawn. Fundamental disagreements separate them.

Opposition, dissension, secession

Over the last four decades, the chorus of demands for democratization has grown stronger and louder. We can identify six such calls and every time, they have been silenced by the Politburo. The first was in the spring of 1956 in Hanoi, when a local group of intellectuals and artists affiliated with the Dat Moi newpaper and the weekly Nhan Van criticized and ridiculed governmental abuses. On October 30, 1956, before the Front of the Fatherland, Nguyen Manh Tuong, a lawyer, eloquently dissected the mistakes of the campaign of Agrarian Reform, during which hundreds of thousands of innocent people lost their lives. Tuong swiftly fell from grace. 41 years later, on October 13, 1992, Phan Dinh Dieu, a mathematician, made waves with his bold criticism of the government and his suggestions for reform. The second call for democratization came loud and clear in 1967, and it is known historically as the "trial of the revisionists". Marxist veteran Hoang Minh Chinh and hundreds of party cadres, some minor, some high ranking, and of army officers were purged by Le Duan, the PCV’s secretary general, and Le Duc Tho. Following Duan’s death in 1986, Doi Moi was launched, introducing a number of emergency economic changes but essentially still toeing the socialist line. The third call for democratization was launched by Nguyen Ho (promoter of the Veterans’ Club and editor of Khang Chien) and his group in Saigon and the southern provinces. They were harassed mercilessly by the security police and were swiftly silenced. The fourth attempt at democratization took place in 1989 when Politburo theoretician Tran Xuan Bach was "retired" following his statement to the press that he favored multipartism. Six months later, Vice Premier and Foreign Affairs Minister Nguyen Co Thach was fired for daring to tell the United Nations’ General Assembly that "…We wanted to build a society for the benefit of the people but our mistake has been to entrust the government with this task… It is obvious that the government cannot do it. The people alone can." In 1995, a fifth attempt, more ambitious attempt, was made. General Tran Do, chairman of the Central Committee for Arts and Culture and Vice President of the National Assembly, was disciplined for addressing two open letters to the Politburo asking for free elections and fundamental freedoms for the people. He wrote: "We must establish a democratic regime based on the respect of the rule of law, a government of the people, by the people and for the people… We can no longer wait and we cannot just slip in a mention of this in a Party’s decision, for the sake of formality – it has to be enshrined in the Constitution approved unanimously by the people." In order to silence the sixth call for democratization, prior to the 8^th Congress of the PCV, the government arrested a group of dissidents that included party members, intellectuals and former Southern Resistance fighters such as Hoang Minh Chinh, Do Trung Hieu, Ha Si Phu, Le Hong Ha, Nguyen Thanh Giang, etc. Their crime: they endangered national security by making public sensitive information. A handful of others, among them Bui Minh Quoc, Tieu Dao Bao Cu and Hoang Tien were placed under house arrest and their telephone line was cut.

At the end of 1997, rising tension in the countryside, the declining economy and the growth of external influences emboldened the pro-democracy movement. Documents sent directly from Vietnam or through third parties began to appear in the foreign press. They came from four so-called "reactionaries" with their own private objectives and acting without consultation with each other: Tran Do, Phan Dinh Dieu, Hoang Minh Chinh and Hoang Huu Nhan. These documents were written prior to the fourth plenary session of the Politburo but after the election of Le Kha Phieu as secretary general of the party. Tran Do, in particular, was disseminating abroad his exhortations to the Marxist leaders, something he had not dared do in 1994. In a memorandum, the Vietnamese Minister of Foreign Affairs described such attacks as "daily happenings". At the same time, he denied rumors that scientist Phan Dinh Dieu had been placed under house arrest. Is this a new Politburo tactic? And for how long? One wonders whether the government has now decided to publicly acknowledge the opposition in order to ease the tension it has been subjected to. Phan Dinh Dieu is the only one of the four "reactionaries" who is not a member of the party. He is currently the vice chairperson of the Front of the Fatherland. He chooses his words carefully, unlike Tran

Do who was once a high ranking army officer and party member and who openly and bluntly criticizes his former colleagues. He calls for a review of the legislation, for freedom of expression and for regional elections (although he doesn’t goes into specifics). As for Hoang Huu Nhan, he acknowledges the party’s past contribution and leadership but maintains that in order to save itself, it has to undergo complete reeducation. Having had two private meetings with secretary general Le Kha Phieu, Hoang Minh Chinh is being moderate in his statements but he is still calling for a Congress of Patriots made up of communists, domestic critics and representatives of the diaspora.

These four men agree on one thing: corruption, bureaucratic red tape and authoritarianism, based on an outmoded ideology, have cost the current regime the people’s trust. Hoang Minh Chinh and Tran Do go to the heart of the problem when they ask the PCV to choose between the party and the people, Marxism and country. However, neither of them mentions the necessity of revising the Constitution in order to introduce multipartism.

Vietnamese abroad have asked a crucial question: to what extent can they trust and support these home-grown dissidents? The communists are notorious experts in the art of fabricating an opposition and agents provocateurs to sow doubt and discord among their opponents. Our answer is that these public debates about the weaknesses of the Vietnamese leadership and their mistakes are better than nothing as they at least educate the people about what is happening. Let us also remember that the many true combatants for democracy in Vietnam cannot express their thoughts freely and we cannot expect too much from them just because we ourselves enjoy greater freedoms. We should however be vigilant and always assess the situation carefully – Hanoi has many tricks up its sleeve and does not hesitate to use them to silence its adversaries. It will never willingly give up power, we have to make it do so. To broaden opposition is not sufficient. We have to be able to distinguish the real from the fake. We have to transcend minor differences and form a unified front, at home and abroad, since solidarity alone will turn us into a real force, with clear objectives and strategies.

Most people in Vietnam, from former Resistance fighters to long-standing PCV members to the common people, agree today that political renovation has to go hand in hand with economic reform. Many believe that Doi Moi is the brain child of former secretary general Nguyen Van Linh.

On October 2, 1997, for the first time, the Politburo commemorated simultaneously in Hanoi, Saigon and Nam Dinh the 90^th birthday of Truong Chinh, Linh’s predecessor, who had died 9 years earlier. In the newspaper Cong San and the publication Nhan Dan, Ha Xuan Trung and Dinh Nho Liem sang Truong Chinh’s praises, "a genius of a revolutionary leader, the man who led the coup d’etat of August 19, 1945 against the French Imperialists …" . Why did they wait 10 years after the launch of Doi Moi to reveal that Truong Chinh was the spiritual father of the program? The reason may be found in the Political Report and the Final Decision of the 6^th Congress of the PCV in 1986. These two documents summarize Truong Chinh’s policy, one that advocated a radical change: a systematic ideological re-examination based on an objective factual study, free of the prejudices of the past. Truong Chinh was the first person to warn about the necessity to "Change or die!". The Politburo at the time was torn between two factions: the supporters of Doi Moi, scientists and technicians for the most part, and the conservatives led by Le Duan and Le Duc Tho. Duan and Tho held most of the power and came together to neutralize Truong Chinh. After Duan’s death, Chinh recovered some influence but not enough to beat Tho and his group. It took the cataclysmic changes in the Soviet Union and its European satellites to make Tho realize that he could no longer block the reformist winds blowing over the Marxist world. Before and after the 7^th Congress of the PCV in 1991, and following the dismantling of the Soviet bloc, the supporters of Doi Moi (which had been adopted by the 6^th Congress) were pushed aside. Those who supported a style of renovation a la Truong Chinh wanted to see some kind of economic overture in order for the country to receive aid and foreign investments, but they also wanted to maintain the status quo elsewhere. They wanted to maintain their privileges and power. It has become obvious however that the regime will not be able to survive unless global reform takes place. The somewhat belated glorification of Truong Chinh is probably just a first step along that road.

Two weeks after these events, general Le Kha Phieu, an influential member of the Politburo, consulted a number of veterans of the revolution about the direction political reform, if any, should take. On April 14, 1997, Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet signed Decree #31 which authorized the security forces and local administrative committees to place suspects under house arrest. This arbitrary decision met with forceful public protest. The following month, people in 120 communes in Thai Binh province marched in the streets to protest abuses by the regional authorities. Some observers believe that the communists’ strategy is to "go back one step, go forward two". Others note that contradictions abound at all levels of the government, among the higher ranks as the lower ones. On July 26, 1997, the newspaper Saigon Liberation printed a diatribe by former secretary general Nguyen Van Linh, now a government advisor: "America has not kept its promise for compensation. In 20 years, it has not paid one cent… America is not investing enough in Vietnam! " But then, on August 17, 1997, following several popular demonstrations in Thai Binh and Tam Phu, Thanh Hoa (a province which, with Nghe An and Ha Tinh, is considered a cradle of the revolution), former Prime Minister Pham Van Dong, another government advisor, wrote in the newspaper Lao Dong: "We must democratize the political machine of the party and from there, extend democracy to all other levels of the population." . Dong, almost a centenarian, has been blind for many years. Who is the real author of this article? Many think it is the work of a group of activists who are using Dong’s name and prestige to try and convince the men in power that it is time for political reform.

To appease public opinion, the government has taken four decisions: l) make public ten projects of so-called "modernization and industrialization in the rural areas". 2) promise to rejuvenate and specialize the administrative machinery. 3) make it compulsory for governmental cadres at village level to declare their possessions. 4) activate the anti-corruption campaign.

These projects are in reality only in their embryonic state and it will take 3 to 5 years before they produce any results. We can see why the peasants are not responding with any great enthusiasm. Meanwhile, national and regional security forces, coast guards and custom officers, the PCV’s financial organs and the People’s Army remain the bastions of corruption. Democratization, under these conditions, has little chance to flourish.

Political hot spots and the stabilizing force of Vietnamese Communists

In Hanoi, political and social sciences experts define a hot spot as "an area where popular dissatisfaction is high, out of control even, over a matter that is beyond the means of local authorities to solve. Intervention from senior cadres and judiciary bodies is necessary."

There are currently many hot spots in Vietnam and they spread like wildfires. Each hot spot is characterized by massive demonstrations which often turn violent, blocking traffic and taking security agents as hostages. The people are exasperated by governmental blunders and abuses, which have made their life increasingly miserable. Their grievances can be summarized thus: 1) abuses by corrupted local officials who totally ignore the basic rights of the people under their jurisdiction, and this with the tacit support of their superiors. In the communes of Tho Xuan, Trieu Son, Hoa Loc, Quang Xuong...., to name but a few, the people have taken to the streets. Marching in an orderly fashion, flanked by former combatants, some of them maimed, some of them retired from the party, the demonstrators shouted anti-government slogans in the name of legal patriotic associations such as the Front Against Corruption, the League Against Negativism… 2) partisanship in the way inter-communal conflicts about administrative responsibilities, markets, cultural disputes, are resolved. In Quang Phuc, Dong Quang, Quy Loc, Vinh Quang, Cam Thuy...., the demonstrators and local forces got into scuffles. 3) the inept way in which regional incidents are solved often leads to bloody confrontations between the various groups responsible for security and village administration, for instance the fight between the Cong An and the Militia in Tan Tuong and Thanh Hoa. According to official statistics, there are some thousand hot spots in the 60 provinces throughout the country.

Besides these regional trouble spots, there are some at national level. Ha Nghiep, assistant to former secretary general Do Muoi, recounted a private conversation he had with the Assistant Minister of the Interior Le Minh Huong in late October 1992 at the Marx Lenin Institute in Hanoi. Huong told him there were currently in Vietnam 3.5 millions "anti-patriotic revolutionaries", that is 5% of the total population. Six years later, this number must be a lot higher as popular dissatisfaction is a lot more pronounced. This situation is fraught with danger for the PCV. Do Muoi’s observation is ominous: "Among the party cadres, a large number have started to doubt socialist ideology and are looking to another path."

The question is, how efficient is the counter-revolutionary communist machine? Engineer Nguyen Thanh Giang, a member of the Geological and Physiological Association of Hanoi, believes that "there won’t be one young combatant who is prepared to obey a repressive order from above". As for Nguyen Ho, Nguyen Ngoc Lan, Tieu Dao Bao Cu and Hoang Tien, they firmly believe that the Good Cause will triumph over the Evil Spirit.

Another explosive problem is the equilibrium between North and South. If the equilibrium is not maintained, the current regime is doomed. Southern Vietnam is currently producing ¾ of the country’s wealth. It’s therefore not surprising that it should be Southerners who question the balance of power, the management and the use of resources for the development of the South.

Religions, minorities and economic crisis represent additional, serious challenges to the PCV. On July 20, 1997, a National Assembly was elected and two months later, a new government was established with Phan Van Khai as Prime Minister and Tran Duc Luong as Head of State. This change has not helped democratization. Secretary General Le Kha Phieu is bound by the conservative resolutions of the 7^th and 8^th Congresses and is unable to even partly satisfy popular demands. "Stability" is the leaders’ leitmotiv. Monopartism is above the rule of law. Meetings between Phieu and some "dissidents" are just for show. They do not signal a change of direction. Decree #31 on arbitrary preventive detention is still in force. The decision to grant amnesty to 5,219 prisoners on the occasion of National Day, September 2, and a further group of 2,600 detainees a while later are simply aimed at reassuring foreign investors. Journalist Nguyen Hoang Linh was released after a year and 13 days in prison. Prisoners of conscience Doan Viet Hoat, Ly Tong, Tran Manh Quynh and others were driven out of the country after their release. Venerables Thich Quang Do, Tue Si and Tri Sieu have remained under surveillance since their release. Their prison has simply got bigger.

Hanoi is mired in a leadership and ideology crisis. Doi Moi is paralyzed by the power struggle between two kinds of reformists, the "diehards" on one side, the "half-baked" on the other. In the struggle for the leadership of the country, the people are slowly gaining ground, and the PCV is in an increasingly defensive mode. Workers and peasants are no longer passively accepting what is happening to them. ASEAN and the free world look and cheer them on.

Within the Politburo, rival factions are circling each other, they negotiate, they compromise. The status quo is fragile. The diehard reformists are still in a minority but their time will come. If Hanoi insists on burying its head in the sand, Vietnamese Marxism is breathing its last.

LAM LE TRINH