Vietnamnet.vn
Podcast
VietNamNet’s talked with some senior officials of the Vietnam Fatherland Front (VFF) on this issue, on the sideline of the conference for collecting comments on the draft Constitution of the VFF in Hanoi last week.
VFF’s former Deputy Secretary General--Le Quang Vinh:
The draft amendments to the Constitution 1992 adds to Article 4 on the leadership of the Communist Party clause 2, which stipulates that "the Party closely connects with the people, serves the people, works under the supervision of the people, is responsible to the people on its decisions."
Vinh said: “When making comments on the draft Constitution, the majority opinions suggested keeping Article 4 on the leadership of the Party, but some also suggested adding some new contents to this article. My viewpoint is to keep the Article 4, but it should be included with conditions and necessary additions to deal with the current limitations.”
He said that the Party still has a vacuum of power that has not been well supervised, which can easily generate abuse of power.
According to him, adding clause 2 to Article 4 is necessary but it is not enough because the people’s mechanism for monitoring over the party is unclear. “It is necessary to create a legal framework, which is the legislation of the Party,” he said.
He added that if only talking about the people’s supervision over the Party but not to enact law, the clause 2 will be just a slogan. The effect of the Constitution will only be executed when the law comes into being.
“It needs to be implemented soon because it is too late now,” he stressed.
VFF’s former Vice Chair Le Truyen said:
“The Party has long said that it is for the people, to serve the people. But it is time to have a clear legal framework to ensure that all of the Party’s activities have a legal basis, and to have a clear foundation for the people to implement their rights of monitoring and critics over the Party’s activities. In my opinion, when people are discussing the Article 4 widely, it is more proved the need of having the law on the Party soon.
The draft Constitution has added clause 2 to Article 4. I hope that this will be the basis and the precondition for the building of the law on the Party after the adoption of the Constitution. This issue was mentioned for a long time ago but it then fell into silence. Now, it should be discussed again on the occasion of amending the Constitution.
Obviously, in the process of building the state of law, no organizations and individual can stand outside the law. The construction of the law of the Party is to assert the leadership of the Party and ensure the basis for the leadership of the Party must be associated with the law, with the supervision of the people. This is the appropriate and ripe time for drafting and promulgating the law of the Party.
Member of the VFF’s Presidium Nguyen Tuc:
The building of law of the Party is no longer a new thing. When Mr. Le Quang Dao was the Party Secretary and Chairman of the National Assembly and then the Chairman of the VFF, he persisted on the suggestion on legislation of the Party.
In 1993, when we composed the Resolution 07 of the Politburo, the compilation of the law on the Party was set out in the Politburo but since then for many reasons the law has not yet drafted.
In my viewpoint, if there is no law on the Party, the phenomenon of degeneracy inside the Party will not be pushed back. It is also the issue that was raised from the 6th Party Congress (1986) until now.
Along with building the law on the Party, it is necessary to build the law on social critics in order to promote the rights of the people and the Party must be supervised by the people like other agencies and organizations.
All these issues need to be carried out as soon as the amended Constitution is passed. This is the appropriate time because next year we will have to prepare the draft platform for the 12th Party Congress.
Le Nhung
.svg){kind=icon}
