NA debates amendments to 1992 Constitution

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The 1992 Constitution is the constitution of the country’s early renewal period and since then the country has experienced many changes in the context of profound and complicated international progress. Amendments and supplements to the 1992 Constitution are necessary to match the country’s current situation, heard the session.

Based on Chairman of the NA Law Committee Phan Trung Ly’s statement, the Party’s documents and the country’s real situation, the NA Standing Committee proposed seven major orientations for amendments and supplements to the 1992 Constitution.

They cover the political regime; economic regulations; culture, education, science and technology; protection of socialist Vietnamese Fatherland; human rights, citizen rights and obligations; organisation of state apparatus; and techniques to formulate regulations of the Constitution.

On the political regime, the amended and supplemented Constitution must affirm the comprehensive leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam over the state and society that are recognised by Vietnamese people with its highest representative body - the National Assembly - written in the Constitution. The future Constitution should affirm the Vietnamese State is a socialist law-governed state of the people, by the people and for the people and all state power belongs to the people.

On this issue, it is necessary to clearly define how the people use state power through representative and direct democratic mechanisms.

The amendments should be based on the viewpoint that the state power is united, with the distribution, coordination and control of power among State agencies in performing legislative, executive and judiciary rights, so each agency will have their own functions, tasks and authority and closely coordinate to create a combined strength of state power.

Discussing the 1946, 1959, 1980 and 1992 Constitutions, deputy Nguyen Dinh Quyen from Hanoi said that the 1946 Constitution was the Constitution of the national founding period while the 1992 Constitution is the Constitution of the national renewal and development stage. This time, amendments should be focused on regulations of the state apparatus, he suggested.

It is essential to clearly define that state power belongs to the people and the coordination among state agencies in the legislative, executive and judiciary fields, the deputy stressed.

Many NA deputies shared the same view with Quyen, saying that this time amendments to the state organisation are a priority. “It is necessary to focus efforts on amending the state organisation and clearly defining state power,” they said.

The organisation of the Central State apparatus should have a mechanism to control and decentralise authority but not to abuse power, while the organisation of local administrations must enhance their self-reliance.

Having acquired the deputies’ opinions, NA Deputy Chairman Uong Chu Luu, who chaired the session, said that the amendments and supplements to the 1992 Constitution will be presented and explained at the closing session.

As planned, the implementation of the 1992 Constitution will be reviewed from August 2011 to March 2012. The draft of the amended Constitution will be presented to the NA for approval in October 2013.

At the end of the August 4 session, the deputies heard a report on the East Sea situation.