II. Challenges to the Party’s leadership
Great achievements of Vietnamese revolution over the past 90 years have affirmed the Party’s role, spirit, and intelligence to execute its historic mission entrusted by the nation and people. On upholding this glorious cause, currently, the Party is concentrating its efforts on leading our people to speed up comprehensive reform of the country, international integration, and implementation of the two strategic tasks, namely construction and protection of the socialist Vietnamese Homeland for the sake of “prosperous people and a strong, democratic, equitable and advanced country.” This is the historic, lofty mission of the Party, the great cause of the entire people and military in the new era. The global and regional contexts, which witness rapid, unforeseeable developments, wide and deep integration, and have both positive and negative influence on our country, require our Party to exercise vigilance and sensibly deal with major relations and issues relating to international integration, cooperation and development in association with protection of national interests. In particular, it is necessary to be well aware of difficulties and challenges as well as opportunities and advantages so as to work out solutions to overcome difficulties, take advantage of opportunities, and transform challenges into opportunities for development. There needs to mention some existing challenges that may pose serious risks to the nation and threaten the survival of the Party and socialist regime if we lack vigilance and fail to address them.
In fact, there are many acute challenges severely affecting and hindering our people’s revolutionary cause. They come from both at home and abroad or a mixture of these two sources, from traditional and nontraditional security issues, from the contradiction between development and protection, and from political, ideological, socio-economic fields as well as from the international integration process. Notably, the challenges exist concurrently. Some are obvious and some are unclear. They relate directly to one another and lead to dangerous, unforeseeable consequences.
First, they are challenges from “self-evolution” and “self-transformation” within the political system. This is an extremely dangerous problem that requires us to show great vigilance and have effective prevention and response. There are several causes of “self-evolution” and “self-transformation” but the most profound and basic one is degradation in political ideology, morality, and lifestyle of a large part of cadres and party members. In addition to conclusion that most of the cadres possess firm ideological standpoint, political steadfastness, morality, simple lifestyle, exemplariness, sense of discipline, dedication to self-training, and improved capacity to complete their assigned tasks, Resolution of the 7th Plenum of the Party Central Committee (12th Tenure) is aimed at making the corps of cadres at all levels, especially the strategic one, have fine dignity, suitable competence, and prestige on a par with requirements of missions. According to the Resolution, apart from those with political steadfastness and consistency of Marxism-Leninism, Ho Chi Minh’s thought, and the goal of national independence and socialism, there remains a large number of cadres who possess not-so-good political steadfastness and manifestations of degradation in political ideology, ethics, and lifestyle. Alarmingly, recently, some cadres and party members have shown clear manifestations of “self-evolution” and “self-transformation,” and called for a “pluralistic and multi-party system” and removal of socialism. Some cadres have shown manifestations of degradation in morality and lifestyle, lack of exemplariness and sense of responsibility, words without matching deeds, divergence from the principle of democratic centralism, self-criticism and criticism; fallen into individualism, selfishness, and pragmatism; put their personal interests and those of their families first; abused privileges and advantages; and kept aloof from the people. Resolution of the 4th Plenum of the Party Central Committee (12th Tenure) has clearly pointed out 27 manifestations of degradation in political ideology, morality, and lifestyle of part of cadres and party members to recognise and make responses. The situation will result in severe degradation in political ideology, undermine faith, ideal, and combat power of party members and organisations if it is not timely coped with. Alarmingly, hostile forces try their best to exploit these problems to carry out the plot to remove the leadership of the Party and overthrow the socialist regime in our country. Consequently, early anticipation, proactive identification and response far ahead to manifestations of degradation in political ideology, ethics, and lifestyle of cadres and party members represent a premise for effectively preventing and responding to “self-evolution” and “self-transformation” within the Party and strengthening the leading role and combat power of the Party. In fact, no matter how powerful and malicious they are, the hostile forces cannot defeat us if we do not make ourselves weak and disintegrate.
Challenges from bureaucracy, corruption, and wastefulness of cadres and party members also fuel anger of people in the society. These are not only challenges, but also great risks when our Party is the only ruling party. Corruption is regarded as national problem and “internal enemy,” which is no less dangerous than foreign aggressors as taught by Uncle Ho. It is common knowledge that corruption is a social phenomenon whose existence is always associated with state and cadres in high positions. Corruption exists in various forms, ranging from money, property, and land to policy corruption, corruption in personnel work, and may occur at all echelons, in all areas, and in varying degrees, including large-scale corruption and petty corruption. Complete eradication of corruption, therefore, is not an easy job. However, it is possible to prevent, cope with, and minimise corruption in both degree, number of cases and its seriousness. Corruption causes extremely grave consequences. It erodes the nature of our Party and State, depraves the corps of cadres and party members, undermines people’s belief in the Party and State, and gives the hostile forces a pretext for doing deliberate damage to the cause of national construction and defence.
They are challenges right in Party building. There needs to affirm that our Party attaches special attention to Party building and clearly acknowledging its core position in the Party’s revolutionary cause and pivotal role in the survival and development of the Party. Hence, Resolution of the 12th National Party Congress has identified that Party building is the number one mission among the six key missions of the term that need to be led and coordinated implementation. In fact, our Party has promulgated many special resolutions and directives regarding Party building with a view to making party organisations at all levels constantly strong in terms of politics, ideology, organisation, and morality, satisfying demand of the new era. Where do challenges from Party building emanate from? The answer is from incorrect coordination of implementation. Our Party’s power is generated from solidarity and unity of willpower and actions based on principles and rules defined in Party Regulations. Nevertheless, in many places, the principle of democratic centralism has not been strictly adhered to or even seriously violated, sowing internal discord. Notably, there are some places where cadres and party members exploit this principle to escape their higher echelons’ notice, isolate and neutralise their lower echelons, turning these party organisations into “private sky” to secure their own interests and those of their groups. The implementation of self-criticism and criticism still witnesses many limitations and is mostly boilerplate. It is a weak aspect in party activities and has not become a constant deed of party committees, organisations, and members. In addition, inspection of party organisations and members, which has not been conducted regularly, lacked proactiveness, put more emphasis on punishing violations, and been short of preventive measures, is also a cause and challenge to Party building.
During its leadership of the revolution, our Party always pays attention to people’s interests, puts interests of the people and nation first. Thus, the people wholeheartedly follow the Party to stage revolutions and gain independence, freedom, prosperity, and happiness. This is the source of our Party’s endogenous power and nature. Over the course of ninety years’ leadership of Vietnamese revolution, our Party is always “dedicated to serving the Homeland and People” and has no other desires. The actual operationalisation of all guidelines of the Party is attributed to people’s support and implementation. However, belief of part of people has been more or less eroded due to different reasons. This is also the torment and hurt of the Party and each party member. Consequently, the building of “people’s heart-and-mind posture” to consolidate people’s faith in the Party is an urgent task and, in some aspects, also a difficulty and challenge in Party building today.
One of the most acute challenges that cannot be ignored is the drastic sabotage of the hostile forces by means of “peaceful evolution”. On realising the Party’s reform guideline, our country is in the process of international integration in both breadth and depth in all aspects, especially in the economic area. In this process, we both cooperate and struggle in the context that objects of cooperation and objects of struggle are intertwined and transform constantly. Given their aggressive, reactionary nature, hostile forces leverage this situation to further step up sabotage acts against our revolution in every aspect by all means and malicious tricks with the aim of removing the leadership of the Communist Party of Viet Nam and socialist regime in our country. In particular, they strive to exploit and promote “self-evolution” and “self-transformation” within the Party. Hence, increased vigilance and proactive struggle to defeat all plots and acts of sabotage of hostile forces are constant, long-term mission of the whole Party, people, and military.
Those are challenges, which have direct influence on the everlasting life of the Party and our people’s revolutionary cause in the new era and cannot be disregarded. If we do not fully understand and work out proper measures to address these challenges, they will easily become great risks, threatening the existence and development of our Party, regime, and socialist Vietnamese Homeland. Obviously, these are not all the challenges. We must exercise precaution and proactively prevent risks from traditional and nontraditional security issues as well as factors that potentially lead to sudden changes from both at home and abroad, e.g. the Covid-19 pandemic.
(To be continued)
Quang Hop, Van Su and Minh Dat
