Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Speech of Party General Secretary Nong Duc Manh at the Opening section of the National Assembly 11th tenure.

Building a socialist law-governed State

The Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam affirmed that building a socialist law-governed State of the people, by the people and for the people under the leadership of the Party is a basic, strategic and long-term task in the process of implementing socio-economic targets set for the 2001-2010 period.

This does not only affirm our Party's political determination in accelerating the renovation process of the State's organisation and operations, promoting democracy, and increasing law enforcement but also marks a new stage of development in the process of building a new model State - a State of the people, by the people and for the people.

First of all, this means the building of a socialist law-governed State under the leadership of the Party in line with principled views, ie our State is a law-governed State of the people, by the people and for the people. The State exercises its unified power with a division of work and co-ordination with State agencies in implementing the legislative, executive and judicial rights without any disagreement of these rights. The State executes its management of the society by laws. All agencies, organisations, cadres, public employees and citizens are obliged to observe the Constitution and laws. The renovation of the State organisation and operations must be closely connected with the Party building and rectification as well as the reform of the Party leadership over the State.

Second is strongly implementing the institutional reform and the renovation of the State operations.

The National Assembly is the agency with the highest State power. Therefore, it is a must to strengthen its organisation and to reform its operational formula and operations with efforts focusing on enhancing the legislative work, performing well the function of deciding important issues for the country, and effectively executing the right to the supreme supervision of the entire operations of the State.

The government is the highest administrative agency. It is a must to:

- build a State administration which is democratic, pure, and strong and which is modernised step by step,

- adjust the functions and improve the operational formula of the government along the direction of consistent macro-management of the execution of political, economic, social, and external relations tasks while firmly maintaining national defence and security throughout the country by enforcing a uniform system of laws, and policies,

- clearly define functions, tasks and competencies of the ministries along the line that a ministry's management covers many sectors and many domains on the national scale by providing public services,

- at the same time, decentralisation will be carried out to raise the local authorities' autonomy, thus closely combining the management of sectors and territories and correctly performing the principle of democratic centralism.

The Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuracy are the highest judicial organisations. It is necessary to re-organise, raise the quality of operations of all judicial organisations and increase the responsibility and capability of these organisations and their staff members. The People's Procuracy must perform well its prosecution and supervision of judicial performance. The People's Court system must be re-arranged and its jurisdiction must be re-determined properly at all levels. Investigation organisations and other law-enforcement agencies must also be re-organised to make them neat and effective.

Enhancing democracy, preserving strict order and discipline and strengthening legislation are regarded as a very important point in building our State. The Ninth National Party Congress stressed the need to raise the quality of a representative democracy through people-elected organisations at all levels as well as to better carry out the democracy regulation at the grassroots level and increase direct democracy at the grassroots level.

The congress also set forth strict requirements in building a contingent of qualified and competent government personnel, who are well trained about the Party and government's guidelines and policies, the State's laws as well as their professional and managerial skills. They must be assigned to their qualifications and positions, and be regularly inspected and evaluated.

The ninth congress placed emphasis on the fight against corruption, saying this struggle must be accelerated within the State apparatus and the entire political system at all levels, from the centre to the grassroots. The anti-corruption struggle must be linked with efforts against wasteful spending, red tape, smuggling and, particularly, the abuse of power to achieve illegal wealth.

The instructive idea, which is also the determination of the Party Central Committee, is to do all needed to increase the people's strength as well as our State's legislation and its effectiveness and efficiency. We will not do and will never accept any thing that may weaken our State's revolutionary nature or do harm to its prestige and strength.

We must build our own work style that matches words with deeds. What we have said must be done effectively, thoroughly, and perfectly. It is a must to overcome the bad habit of speaking without doing, more talking than doing or talking in one way and acting in another.

Ours is a State of the people, that of the all-people unity bloc and also of all fraternal nationalities living in harmony across the country. In this State, every citizen has the right and obligation of mastery, regardless of sex, race and religion. Our State always follows its foreign policy of independence, self-reliance and openness in order to multilateralise and diversify its international relations, become a reliable friend and partner of all nations in the world community, strive for peace, independence and development.

We do our best to build our State in order to help every Vietnamese person and citizen to enhance his/her right of mastery, contribute his/her talent and strength to national construction, live in equality and happiness and be respected by the Constitution and protected by laws as well as enjoy peace and friendship with other peoples around the world. We reject all allegations by hostile forces that slander democracy and human rights in our country. We will oppose any move that is disguised under democracy and human rights or that abuses religious and ethnic minority problems for intervention into our internal affairs in order to undermine our national unity bloc and prevent our efforts to expand democracy, strengthen legislation and ensure the unity of our State.

Enhancing the role and efficiency of the NA's activities

The National Assembly is the highest representative organisation of the people and the most powerful body of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. It has not only the task of renewing its organisation and operation in order to meet the requirements of a law-governed socialist State of the people, by the people and for the people, but also plays an important role in the course of building a socialist law-governed State in our country.

Based on the practical operation of the NA over the past years and the Resolution on amending and supplementing a number of articles of the 1992 Constitution and the Law on Organisation of the National Assembly, I ask the eleventh NA to focus efforts on improving the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of its operation.

On legislative activities

During its eighth, ninth and tenth tenures that operated in the national renovation period, the NA promulgated the 1992 Constitution and issued the Resolution on amending and supplementing the Constitution. The NA and its Standing Committee also promulgated hundreds of laws and ordinances, including essential codes such as the Civil Code, the Criminal Code and the Labour Code.

The legal system has readjusted activities in almost all areas of the State and society of Vietnam, ranging from politics, economics, security, national defence to culture, science and technology and civil exchange, thus making significant contributions to the stable development of the country during the course of carrying out the renovation line initiated by the Party.

However, Vietnam's legal system needs to be improved and unified as its quality and efficiency are not high. The country's legal system has failed to keep abreast of reality, to meet the requirements of the process of accelerating national industrialisation and modernisation, developing a socialist-oriented market economy. Legislative activities of the country have not yet fully reflected the people's will and aspirations. A number of legal documents are not concrete and need a series of sub-laws to be implemented.

In order to have a complete, high quality and effective legal system, it is necessary to map out a long-term legislative programme, stretching over the period of national industrialisation and modernisation. The programme will serve as the foundation for designing law-making plans for each year and for the whole tenure.

It is imperative to further reform the law-making process, adhering to a set of strict procedures. The process must contain a number of stages with the involvement of relevant representatives. The responsibility and work-style of the law compilation board must be clearly defined. It is also necessary to renew the ways of seeking voters and experts' opinions and regulations on NA deputies' presentation of opinion, and to improve the way and the efficiency of the law passing process at NA sessions.

Those changes aim to raise the quality, particularly law-making technique, of draft laws and ordinances submitted to the NA and NA Standing Committee. The promulgation of laws is important but what is more important is to help people understand and strictly observe enacted laws.

On supervision work

A law-governed State requires a strong and effective inspection and supervision mechanism over the entire operation of the State.

I ask that the eleventh NA vigorously enhance inspection and supervision work with special attention given to NA supervision. A complete law on NA supervision should be made and promulgated soon.

Supervision activities should focus on urgent issues raised by voters. It is also necessary to strengthen the supervision of the promulgation of legal documents and the implementation of the Petition and Denunciation Law by the people and voters' recommendations.

It is necessary to complete the National Assembly's supervision methods both inside and outside the meeting rooms, to listen to and evaluate in public reports from the government, the Supreme People's Court, and the Supreme People's Procuracy, as well as government members' answers to queries raised by voters or National Assembly deputies, to exercise the National Assembly's rights to supervision through confidence votes on holders of positions elected or approved by the National Assembly. There should be no place for incompetence, professionally or morally. We should further fasten the bonds of supervision between the National Assembly and ordinary people and listen to the public voice.

On the decision making process related to major national issues

The major issues on which the National Assembly is responsible for making decisions have already been listed in the Constitution and the Law on National Assembly Organisation. However, to have them translated into reality, the National Assembly needs to possess not only full rights but also all required legal and practical conditions.

National Assembly deputies must be competent in analysing and evaluating the issues and the legislative body must be provided with full information on the issues that it will make a decision on. Otherwise decisions will be purely formalistic and legal documents on paper only.

We should try harder to help the National Assembly and its deputies, on the basis of full information and through democratic discussions, to devote their knowledge and energy to work out the best solutions and to make more practical decisions on master-plans of socio-economic development, State budget allocation, national programmes, major investment projects, issues on structural and personnel organisation and other key issues.

I would like to emphasise once more that the task to raise the quality and efficiency of the National Assembly operation must go together with efforts to improve the quality and efficiency of the government's management and governance capacity, as well as the quality and efficiency of the judiciary's operations as required by the Ninth National Party Congress.

To successfully discharge its functions and tasks, the National Assembly should complete its organisation and build a plan to renovate activities of the National Assembly Standing Committee, the Council for Ethnic Minorities, the National Assembly Committees, and National Assembly deputies, especially activities relating to practical surveys, meetings with voters and the people in general, and the collection and analysing of information for correct decisions.

According to the currently effective Law on the Organisation of the National Assembly, the National Assembly of the eleventh legislature will have at least 25% of its total deputies as full-time lawmakers. This is a new move to raise the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of operations of the National Assembly in the time to come. Therefore, it is necessary to arrange a rational, scientific and efficient number of full-time lawmakers at delegations and agencies of the National Assembly in order to make a qualitative change in the organisation and operations of National Assembly delegations and agencies.

National Assembly deputies are representatives of the will and aspiration of the people, not only in their constituencies but also in the whole country. They represent the people in exercising the State power in the National Assembly. Each National Assembly deputy, in whatever position, should uphold the responsibility of the people's representative, keep close contact with and be supervised by voters, study the aspirations of voters, collect voters' opinions and proposals and submit them to the National Assembly and relevant State agencies. National Assembly deputies should uphold ethical qualifications; practise industriousness, righteousness, and devotion to public interests; set example in abiding by the law; and resolutely fight all signs of excessive bureaucracy, power abuse, corruption and other illegal violations.

The Communist Party of Vietnam, in implementing its function of leading the whole society and its obligations and powers regulated by the Constitution, has and will care for the building of the State and the National Assembly into those really of the people, by the people and for the people and operating efficiently and effectively. (VNA)