May 25, 2011
By Patrick Goodenough
(CNSNews.com) – When students at a university in Vietnam went to the polls this week in the country’s legislative elections, they did so armed with “guidance” from the school’s management on which candidates the Communist Party expected them to vote for.
A document obtained by CNSNews.com, issued by the management of Vinh University in Nghe An province, states: “It is the choice of each voter to choose who is to receive their vote. However, the Party has instructed that Vinh University voters are to be aware of the Party’s instructions on the elections, as follows.”
There followed a list of five local candidates for the National Assembly – Vietnam’s legislature and ostensibly the “highest organ of state power” – as well as six candidates for the provincial legislature, or “People’s Committee.”
Alongside eight of the 11 candidates, in a column marked “Instruction,” appear the words, “To win.” Alongside the remaining three candidates, the column is blank. (See guidance.pdf and translation.pdf)
Whether the apparent attempt to manipulate voters is standard practice is not known, although a source in the Vietnamese-American community told CNSNews.com Tuesday it was “common in Vietnam.”
Neither the Ministry of Home Affairs, which oversees elections; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which deals with foreign media inquiries; nor Vinh University administration responded to queries.
The government in Hanoi and official media in the one party state have taken pains to stress the significance of what the Voice of Vietnam (VOV) national broadcaster called “the great national elections” – the selection of 500 National Assembly members and almost 302,000 representatives to commune-, district- and provincial-level People’s Councils.
But when tens of millions of Vietnamese cast their ballots Sunday, they did so in a voting exercise so tightly controlled critics say it barely merits being called an election.
Every candidate went through a screening process by a body controlled by the Communist Party, known as the Fatherland Front.
According to Vietnam’s Ministry of Home Affairs, 86 percent of the 827 candidates running for National Assembly seats were members of the Communist Party.
Just 15 candidates were “self-nominated” – that is, they were not selected by the Fatherland Front or by official institutions like women’s or veteran’s organizations. Even those 15, however, had to obtain the Fatherland Front’s approval to run.
The official line was that voters did have a real choice.
“Voters nationwide eagerly anticipate going to the polls to elect moral, talented and deserving deputies to represent the will and aspirations of the people and their right to mastery in the legislative body and People’s Councils,” VOV stated on election morning.
Voting is mandatory, and the Ministry of Home Affairs estimated that more than 97 percent of voters cast their ballots. Results for the National Assembly are to be announced by May 29, and the rest by June 6.
Real power in Vietnam is held not by National Assembly deputies but by the Politburo and Central Committee, picked by a Communist Party congress in January.
The behind-closed doors congress also confirmed new leaders for the years ahead, with Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung retaining his post. The person handed the powerful post of party general secretary was Nguyen Phu Trong, a stalwart with a background in party propaganda media, named by the press watchdog Reporters Without Borders as a “predator of press freedom.”
‘Farce’
Asked about the evident attempt to predetermine the result, Trung Doan, a leader in the Vietnamese Australian Community, said Hanoi’s goal was for the election “to provide a veneer of legitimacy conducive to getting foreign aid.”
“At the same time, embarrassing results must be avoided,” he said. “The significance of this rigging effort is to maintain a veneer of legitimacy while prevent embarrassing results.” Doan said that even without the election day manipulation, the exercise was a travesty.
“Even without this poll-day rigging, the pre-poll rigging efforts – of thwarting dissidents’ efforts to nominate themselves, and of the ruling party having the power to vet all nominees – makes these elections a farce,” he said.
“It’s not really an election when there’s only one party competing,” said Duy Hoang, a U.S.-based spokesman for the banned pro-democracy group, Viet Tan (Vietnam Reform Party).
“Through various legal pretext, the communist authorities in Vietnam have outlawed opposition parties and thus popular participation,” he said Tuesday.
Hoang said it was also ironic that, just one week after the vote, “seven peaceful activists will go on trial for subversion based on their pro-democracy advocacy through affiliation with Viet Tan.”
The seven due to face trial on May 30 in the southern province of Ben Tre include Duong Kim Khai, a Mennonite pastor and democracy activist who has been jailed more than a dozen times since 1985, and was arrested again last August.
He and six others are accused of “attempting to overthrow the socialist government,” charges that carry lengthy prison terms or a death sentence.
Viet Tan describes them as “Vietnamese patriots, faithful to their religious ideals, and selflessly serving their communities.”
The Bush administration designated Vietnam a “country of particular concern” for religious freedom abuses in 2004, but lifted the designation two years later, citing improvements.
The decision to delist Hanoi was opposed at the time, and since, by the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom and other concerned groups.
Source: CNSnews.com