Dr. Le Kien Thanh, the son of former Party Secretary General Le Duan, spoke to VietNamNet about his opinions on how to successfully implement the Resolution of the Party Congress.

Dr. Le Kien Thanh

We are trying to build a "democratic, fair and civilized society". Have Vietnamese people shown democracy, equality and civilization? Not yet! Have Vietnamese understood and struggled for social justice? Not yet! Have Vietnamese people reached the civilization of the times? Not yet!

To achieve these, we need to accurately identify and evaluate the human factor. There are many issues that the draft resolutions of the Party mentioned but to turn them into reality, it is another issue.

To build a "democratic, fair and civilized society", first of all Party members have to become the “new men” to entice, to shape the model of the “new people” who we are trying to build. We have to take it as a very important objective in building and developing the country. If we just focus on economic growth, we can only solve the tip of the problems. If the root issue is not resolved, then the tip issue cannot be dealt with thoroughly. Here the root is the human being.

We must start from the Party Central Committee, ie this content must be added to the political report of the committee. Then it goes to Party members who hold key positions. When these people do well, corruption and bureaucracy will be reduced. It must be carried out within the Party firstly.

Then the good will be “pushed” to society. This looks like theory but actually it is a mutual result. If the party has corrupt members, such people could not be used to lead the movement to build “new people”, to make society better. Conversely, if the Party cannot build a healthy society, it will not have “new people” for the Party to make the Party better. It is a dialectical relationship between the Party and the people.

Uncle Ho taught: "Party members go first, followed by the people". We must recall the nearly boring things, but indeed they are not boring at all, if they are placed in the current context of our society. That is the principle of construction and development starting from humans. That principle adheres to the existence of the Party.

Criticism and self-criticism gets worse 

The XI National Party Congress

Based on the Party’s targets of building a "democratic, fair and civilized society" we will clearly see the criteria and requirements and what we need to do to build the “new men” for the country in the next stage.

When we come to the concept of “new people” we have to understand democracy and democratic practices.

The “new people” must understand this first concept. Simply, the new man and the new culture have to accept other opinions and listen to others to learn from them. What we say about ourselves, which is called "criticism and self-criticism" has weakened.

We must find new ways to improve ourselves. The opposite opinion is extremely valuable to help us alert, adjust ourselves to develop. If we do not adjust ourselves, it is very dangerous. So, do not be afraid of the opposite opinion. We have to create democracy in humans, in society.

It is similar for equality. If unemployed people do not raise their voice to ask for State solutions, ie they do not understand what is equality. The people are healthy and well-trained but are unemployed, why? Where is justice? That is the minimum right to human life.

We are afraid to summarize that and still "mislead" those people who have temporary jobs as employed people. We should be aware that, the more unemployed people the society has, the more fragile that society is, and the more social distortion comes, such as theft, prostitution and robbery.

It is also similar for civilization.

We need to draw lessons from the shortcomings, mistakes in recent time to overcome them. When we open our society to markets, we seem to overlook the human problem, the root of all other problems. This is incredibly wrong. If someone asks us that what is our orientation for socialism and what is the socialist-oriented economy? I think that socialist orientation is the socialist people who run this market-oriented economy.

Take action

Dialectics is to set a goal of building new men as both purpose and motivation. It is important to look at the causes as we previously discussed. We do not wait to have a civilized society and then the humans get civilization too. We must have civilized men first who will then build a civilized society. That’s what Uncle Ho showed us.

Let’s see socialism is a good society. If we want to have a beautiful society, we must have good men first to build it.

If we can do that we will have a happy society, when our per capita income is only average. Is that the purpose of the party? 

And if we keep using the per capita income as a measure of success and happiness, we will forever be the country at the bottom of the list. When our people earn annual income of $5,000/person, it is $20,000 in other countries. When we reach $10,000/person, it is $30,000-40,000 in other countries.

"Party members go first, followed by the people"

If we build a society in which people love, care for and share with each other and there is no social injustice and oppression, then our society is filled with happiness and love. No need to have high incomes, we used to be like that.

We must take action. It is not that if we do well, the human will be good then. We must do the opposite. That is what I mean after I read the draft report, and that is something worthy to talk about in the report.

Nguyen Hoa