Party to open for business

“Permitting party members to do private business is a justified policy that is in line with the prevailing trends of the times,” Hong Ha, secretary general of the Theoretical Council, the think-tank of the Central Communist Party, told Vietnam Investment Review last week.
Ha was speaking from the sidelines of a conference held in Hanoi to review 20 years of doi moi (open-door policy), an event organised by the United Nations Development Programme, the Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.
After Vietnam officially paved the way for the development of private business with the launch of the Enterprise Law in 2000, the private sector has recorded strong growth, Ha noted.
“Party members are an important force in society and they should be allowed to do private business,” he said. “It is a big waste not to make full use of party members’ knowledge and capital.”
The right for party members to participate in the private sector has become a hot topic as next year’s Party Congress approaches, with some officials contending that the Party Charter should be officially changed to permit such activities.
Ta Huu Thanh, deputy head of the Economic Commission of the Central Communist Party, also voiced his support to change the charter.
“This issue is still being discussed, but I have observed that society, the public and not a small number of party members agree with this,” Thanh told VIR during the National Assembly meeting in May.
The secretary general qualified his position, however, by adding that only party members who are no longer employed by state agencies, the army or the police should be permitted to do private business. Ha, the former editor-in-chief of Nhan Dan, the official newspaper of the Vietnamese Communist Party, added that “state-owned enterprises should play the leading role” in Vietnam’s economy despite many of them being equitised.
Equitisation is not a capitalist idea, he said, citing Karl Marx’s belief that equitisation advanced production.
“Equitisation is a means to build socialism because it makes our economy, the state-owned sector in particular, stronger,” he said.
Stating that equitisation would accelerate in Vietnam in the near future, Ha said the process would not weaken the leading role of the state-owned companies, but rather would help SOEs (state-owned enterprises) to make full use of their important position.
The secretary general rebuffed suggestions that if Vietnam wanted the doi moi process to be more effective, it should get rid of socialist ideology and the party’s dominant status.
“We have to assert that we will consistently and firmly pursue the socialist orientation,” he said.
Ha said Vietnam would successfully follow the values of socialism and bring the party’s leadership into full play while integrating with the international economy and leveraging its achievements since doi moi began in 1986.