A criticism on “Anti-corruption cannot succeed in a single-party system” notion

In governing the State and the society, Vietnam Communist Party (VCP) has always been committed to the fight against corruption and gained many crucial results as well as the support of the people. However, reactionary groups still assert that anti-corruption cannot succeed in a single-party system. This is a distorted notion which aims to discredit the role and political determination of the Party in this fight, and it needs to be completely refuted.

Corruption is a complicated and persistent issue spreading unchecked in many areas, causing a lot of severe consequences in many countries with different political systems. Therefore, many countries, including Vietnam, have put enormous effort in solving this problem. That said, our Party and State have proposed and applied many methods to fight corruption in every area.

Currently, under the leadership of VCP, anti-corruption operations are being assertively conducted. In this fight, there is no “restricted area”, all corrupted officials, whether incumbent or retired, and all types of corruption are its targets. The results achieved during the last few years have created a solid foundation to build a transparent social environment and political system, and enhance the people’s faith in our Party and regime. However, there are still many downsides in our fight against corruption that need to be addressed, and adversary forces and opportunist elements are using these limitations to criticize and discredit our Party and our political system. They say: a single-party regime is the root of corruption; corruption is in the nature of Vietnamese socialist regime; VCP is the cause of corruption, and therefore it cannot fight corruption effectively, etc. To this end, they conclude: corruption can only be eliminated when Vietnam abandons the current single-party system and adopts a multi-party regime.

To criticize and refute these distorted notions, we have to thoroughly and profoundly analyze corruption. First, it is obvious that political system, whether it is single-party or multi-party, is not the cause of corruption, it is the degeneration of power that leads to corruption. Therefore, even in a society with multi-party political system, corruption is still widespread and even exists among the highest level of leadership.

In the U.S., for example, Pepsi used to spend a lot of effort in lobbying and had a very close relationship with Senator R. Nixon. Later when R. Nixon became U.S. President, he removed all Coca-Cola vending machines in the White House and replaced them with Pepsi products. Coca-Cola in turn did the same trick and had J. Carter replace Pepsi vending machines with its machines when the man took the office. In other countries, such as: France, Thailand, South Korea, etc, many retired national leaders had to face trial for corruption. According to Transparency International (IT), countries that ranked as “seriously corrupted” are Columbia, Brazil, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, etc., these countries are not ruled by a communist party and all of them have multi-party political system.

Despite the differences in anti-corruption methods, many countries share the same commitment in tackling this problem: China issued a lot of documents on moral education and building the image of Party and State officials with dignity. According to Singaporean Prevention of Corruption Act 1989, government officials’ properties can be confiscated if they cannot explain their origin.  In Thailand, government agencies are required to accept all corruption reports from the people, whether they are anonymous or not. In many countries such as Columbia, Brazil, Singapore, hotlines are established to collect information about criminal activities in general and corruption in particular. In Vietnam, our State is of the people, by the people and for the people; therefore theoretically it cannot be the cause of corruption. So why does corruption still exist in our country? We have to admit that “to some extent, there are some remnants of the old regime still exist inside our State”. Therefore, frankly speaking, corruption is caused by the “virus” that the old system left behind, causing the degeneration of power in our current State. This does not mean we will surrender in the fight against corruption, but quickly and completely eradicating this problem is an unrealistic objective. We need to understand that, the impact of this “virus” and how to cure it depend on the “immunity” of the new regime – our socialist regime and the capability of our ruling Party.

In fact, VCP has sufficient power, courage and capability to fight corruption. It has always been the vanguard and the political leader of Vietnamese nation and working class, leading and organizing every revolutionary movement in our country. Our political system is a single-party system, and under the leadership of VCP, our revolution has brought the most profound rights to the nation and working class, ensuring that our people are truly the ruler of the society and able to achieve the goal of “being well-off, free and happy”. The revolutionary nature, pioneering characteristic of our Party and its organizational and leadership capability are the decisive factors which ensure the success of the fight against corruption.

Saying VCP is not capable of fighting corruption is completely wrong and reactionary. In both theory and reality, corruption is always connected to powerful individuals and exists in every regime due to its ties with States and authorities. Without the supervision of the Party and the people, Party members and officials who have certain authorities but lack self-discipline and lean toward individualism and opportunism will very likely be corrupted and degenerated. And if this situation still persists, it will be very difficult for anti-corruption activities to be success.

In governing the State and society, anti-corruption is always a special focus of VCP. Besides great achievements in economic development, our fight against corruption has gained significant progresses. It has become an extremely important task, supported by strong commitment of the whole political system and the assistance of the people. General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong said: “once the furnace is getting hot, even wet firewood will burn”, this statement has truly become a great encouragement for the people. As a result, many corruption activities have been exposed and punished, especially serious cases. Therefore, it can be said that our Party is not only committed to the fight against corruption but also capable of conducting it effectively. Thanks to this success, our economy in 2017 had significant growth rate (and in the first quarter of 2018, our growth rate was 7.38%, the highest number in the past 10 years). Indeed, these results can only be achieved with the success in our fight against corruption. This is an undeniable fact, so that saying our Party is not capable of fighting corruption is completely false.

To effectively conduct anti-corruption activities, our Party and State are focusing on tackling key issues such as institutional problems and individual power. Our goal is dealing heavy blow to corruption in general and power corruption in particular. A success in fighting power corruption will cause decisive impacts on other types of corruption. So far, with strong political commitment, assertive methods and the support of the people, to some extent, our Party has limited power degeneration and corruption. Therefore, the Party has always prioritize administrative, organizational and personnel reforms, heavily focusing on building strategic human resources to enhance the capability and the working ethics of our officials. In 2017, the Politburo (tenure XII) issued many provisions on personnel issue, this is considered as a crucial step to enhance the Party’s discipline and address downsides and weaknesses in this aspect. The 7^th Central Committee Resolution (tenure XII) expressed that we must further enhance supervision on authority practices and prevent fraudulent activities in personnel work. At the same time, we must implement various methods to monitor power transfer and exercise to prevent and eliminate power corruption. Besides, effective anti-corruption mechanisms must be developed and tied to the operational mechanisms of the Party and state and power exercising mechanism of the people. Also, our Party must further study and follow Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, morality and life style; implement criticize and self-criticize principle; and uphold the role and responsibility of the Party leadership at all levels, etc. It is obvious that if we cannot succeed in anti-corruption, this will be a chance for reactionary forces to exploit to call for the removal of our Party from its leadership position. But when we achieve successes in the fight against corruption, they will say this is an internal power struggle and whatever the result is, our anti-corruption agenda cannot be successful because there only one party in the system. This notion is simple an old trick and there will be few people falling for it.

Anti-corruption is an impending and permanent task of our Party, our military and our people. With strong political commitment, effective policies and the leadership of our Party, we will surely be successful in this fight. This inevitable outcome is resulted from the nature and leadership capability of Vietnam Communist Party – the sole ruling party of our State and society.