Nong Duc Manh, Phan Van Khai could be history soon

Vietnamese congress in search of new blood

Reuters
TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 2006

HANOI Vietnam's ruling Communist Party opened its congress on Tuesday vowing to choose new leaders "with talent and morals" to fight corruption and accelerate economic reforms.

The traditionally secretive party, one of only a handful of Communist governments in the world, will for the first time give each of the 1,176 delegates the right to recommend candidates for the top post of general secretary, officials said. In the past, the elite politburo alone chose the general secretary.

The incumbent general secretary, Nong Duc Manh, 65, acknowledged in his opening speech that corruption was "one of the major risks that threaten the survival of our regime."

Last week, another politburo member made a similar statement following a public and media outcry over a multi- million-dollar bribery and gambling scandal that forced the transport minister to resign two weeks ago. His deputy was arrested.

Manh said the eight-day congress wanted "to further accelerate" Vietnam's change from a centrally controlled economy to a market-oriented one.

"In the next five years it is our policy to continue to improve market economy status with socialist orientation and to speed industrialization and modernization in close relation with developing a knowledge-based economy," Manh said in Hanoi's Ba Dinh Hall.

The congress only meets once every five years.

Delegates from all over the country filled the hall, which was decorated in red and yellow colors and displayed a bronze bust of Ho Chi Minh and images of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin.

The capital was festooned with red flags and red banners strung across the tree-lined boulevards with slogans printed in yellow. Party statistics show it has 3.1 million members in the population of 83 million people.

Among other top leaders, President Tran Duc Luong, 69, and Prime Minister Phan Van Khai, 72, have both served consecutive five-year terms and were expected to retire, political analysts said.

Officials announced changes in the method of choosing the general secretary after a special plenum in the past few days to discuss personnel selection following the corruption scandal.

"The congress will discuss the course of leading the country and elect new leadership with talent and morals," Dao Duy Quat, a senior culture and ideology official, told state-run media.

Since the 1986 reforms began, Vietnam has opened to the world diplomatically and for business after decades of isolation and wars with the French and Americans and in neighboring Cambodia from the 1950s to the late 1980s.

This year Vietnam wants to become a member of the World Trade Organization. It will also host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November - the largest international event in its history.