Five Vietnam ministers face public grilling
Updated
In Vietnam five senior cabinet ministers are preparing to be questioned this week by the National Assembly Standing Committee. The five ministers will be questioned on "live" television this Saturday on volatile issues like inflation, shoddy construction standards and labour safety. While it's not unheard-of for Vietnamese ministers to face public questions, five at once does raise the political stakes. Hanoi says it's trying to respond to public pressure by giving a limited degree of increased open-ness to discussions.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speakers: Professor Carl Thayer, Australian Defence Force Academy
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THAYER: Although Vietnam is a one party situation and virtually everybody involved in what we're talking about is a member of the party central committee, the ministers are a different group from those who are questioning them. No member of the standing committee could be a minister, and it's their duty to exercise control functions, supervision monitoring of the performance of ministers. So we have an institutional clash setup by the Vietnamese political system in which the ministers will be held accountable and now in public.
LAM: Do you think the ministers might be quaking in their boost as we speak?
THAYER: No, all will be facing within nine months re-election, the entire lot in Vietnam, it's a major thing about to happen. But they're there to explain policies as you rightly observe to a public that has expressed itself quite upset by inflation, which has undermined the government's economic strategies over time in the construction industry as you're getting out, problems of collapses at construction sites, fires in apartment buildings that have been built. So this is the government I think attempting it can't just rule, it has to show a response, to be responsive to public protest and it's trying to relief the pressure valve a bit I think on this.
LAM: As you say price rises, housing for the poor, poor safety standards in construction; these are all fairly volatile issues. Does the Vietnamese government have a record of punishing ministers who don't deliver or who perform very badly in their portfolio?
THAYER: Well ministers have been dismissed and the National Assembly has in the past on rare occasion, but nonetheless important ones, overridden the party and rejected the nomination of ministers themselves. Ministers are dismissed from time to time. The grilling of these five ministers was preceded by the appointment of three new deputy prime ministers and one in one of the portfolios that we're talking about. So the government's trying to strengthen itself. But I think we have to see this grilling as part of the control, but I don't think any of these ministers in particular has done anything that would warrant they're being suspended or dismissed from office. It's accountability now.
LAM: So do you think the questions might be vetted or will it be fairly open and fairly spontaneous?
THAYER: I think the questions will be kind of scripted within certain bounds, but if we took the Planning and Investment Minister, I mean one of the things that his ministry did was approve something like ex-number of golf courses. On another ministry why is there such a high employment rate in Vietnam and why are foreign workers, particularly Chinese, a sensitive issue, being hired. So they have to explain the detail of why golf courses are being built. In fact the ministry has reduced the number. But that's the kind of issue, that kind of response.
LAM: And the very fact that these ministers are fielding questions on live television, do you think that in itself shows a certain measure of government confidence?
THAYER: Yes in fact because in the past the chairman of this particular standing committee has reported to the public where it hasn't been televised, that the minister answered seriously or at length or addressed the issues under concern. Now the public can make up their own minds.
LAM: Well Vietnam's five-yearly National Congress is next year when government positions are up for grabs. Is this questioning part of political manoeuvering if you like to try and get into office?
THAYER: Yes because in the past the elections for the National Assembly was a year later and next year for the first time the elections both for members of the party central committee and for members of the National Assembly, therefore ministers, will occur simultaneously. So this is an occasion where in Vietnam as we lead into this period, issues of corruption, poor administration surface in the press, they're used by since it's a one-party system, not the opposition but groups within the party jockeying to prove why someone should be retired and why their supporter should get up. Or in the case of these ministers with two exceptions, three are very recent appointments to the last congress to the central committee, and they're likely to be looking to be re-elected. The Planning and Investment minister is probably going to retire because of age, and there are age restrictions in Vietnam.
