The activities of criticism and social criticism in our country, over the past years, have been pretty lively, bringing out positive results. However, due to a misconception or a wrong motive, a number of people and groups at home and abroad have taken advantage of those activities to incite people and complicate the situation, even go against the national interests.

Social criticism refers to disagreements of the people over issues which belong to the State and organizations’ guidelines, policies, decisions, projects, relating to every citizen’s rights and life. Social criticism aims to clarify the nature of issues, the strong, weak and incompatible points of the guidelines, policies and decisions. It can be said that the nature of social criticism is the exercise of democracy, making contribution to the correction of shortcomings, generating legal interests and encouraging social development. Social criticism has a profound political significance, reflecting the relationship between the State and the people. Moreover, it represents the advantages of the socialist democracy, the nature of a socialist rule-of-law state in which the power belongs to the people.

Students living and studying in dormitories in Dak Lak province (photo: VNA)

Being fully aware of social criticism’s role and its importance, our Party and State always highly value and take in the criticisms and social criticisms from all walks of life. It was manifested in the construction of Constitution, legal system, policies, and so on. However, apart from sincere and constructive contributions, there is still a number of people who take advantage of social criticism to implement their plots against our Party, State, socialist regime, and people. They further the implementation of “Peaceful Evolution”, “Self-Evolution”, “Self-Transformation”, and a “Depoliticized Army”, and attempt to make use of freedom of speech and social criticism in order to rally forces, encourage opposition in society, organize opposition forces. They move from “criticism” to protest against and opposition to the Party and the State. They refute Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought which provide the ideological foundation for the Communist Party of Vietnam. They plot to remove Party’s leadership and socialist regime in Vietnam. Particularly, before and during the time of the Party’s Congress at all levels, hostile forces drastically provoke their reaction.

To do this, when using the trick of criticism and social criticism, they intentionally misrepresent information, aiming at making people misunderstand the nature of issues. Those who conduct the plot are both at home and abroad, including hostile and discontented elements, even prestigious scientists and experts. These include typical foreign organizations and individuals such as “Vietnamese National Alliance” led by Nguyen Huu Chanh, “Party for the people” by Nguyen Cong Bang and Trinh Thi Ngoc Anh, and so on. Domestically, there are several organizations which use social criticism as a pretext to claim “political pluralism, a multiparty system” with the fallacy that it is the only right and progressive way to develop Vietnam. They convey a challenging message saying that they are “ready for a frank dialogue with the Party to criticize and point out mistakes in the path to socialism”; and that “the Communist Party of Vietnam, for many years, has followed a wrongful way to build socialism imitating the Soviet model which based on Marxism-Leninism”. By a biased, ahistorical, and impractical theory, they attempt to take advantage of social criticism to misinterpret and distort the truth, the Party’s views and guidelines, and the State’s policies and law. More seriously, they intentionally ignore the fact that socialism was selected by not only the Party, President Ho Chi Minh but also the entire people and nation. That choice has always been a consensus between the Party, President Ho Chi Minh and the people. History and reality have clearly proved and confirmed that socialism is the only sound path to move forward of Vietnam’s revolution. Under the Party and President Ho Chi Minh’s leadership, Vietnam’s revolution won consecutive victories, successfully carrying out the August Revolution to seize power for the people, defeating the French Colonialist and American Imperialist who were the most formidable empires of the era to triumphantly fulfil the cause of national liberation, bringing the country to socialism. Next, the cause to innovate the country has gained significant and historical achievements that bring about prosperous and happy life for the people. Up to now, Vietnam’s yearly per capita income has reached 2,000 USD. Recently, there has appeared a number of associations and leagues (illegally founded) such as the “Independent Journalists Association of Vietnam”, the “League of Independent Vietnamese Writers” who self-proclaimed to be the associations of professional fellowship, but in fact, they are oppositional socio-political ones established to create a forum for reactionaries and discontented elements to publish their reactionary writings under the guise of social criticism with a view to distorting the Party’s guidelines and going against the national interests. They have come to a groundless conclusion that “Vietnam’s culture is severely and increasingly degraded, appearing to be in danger of losing the most basic humanistic values, threatening the survival of our nation”. They did not realize achievements in the field of culture and the fact that the Party and the State have carried out a great deal of measures to preserve, build, and develop the Vietnamese culture and people. It is a must to mention the Resolution of the 9th plenum of the 11th Central Party Committee on the building and development of Vietnamese culture and people to meet the country’s sustainable development requirements.

Some “theorists” also make use of social criticism, freedom and democracy to incite people with the argument that we are building a society which is “lacking spaces for freedom”, and that “political factor is not included in the concept of freedom”, “democratization and human liberation is the universal key”. The concept of freedom here was represented as non-existence of organization, rule, culture, law, and constraint. Then they hastily came to a conclusion that the backwardness of our economy has resulted from that of politics. By unpractical and differential approaches, they blamed our political regime. What would our country be like if freedom and democracy were exercised in lawless way? Practically, it is impossible to apply mechanically the type of freedom and democracy in other country to Vietnam’s situation, which has its own characteristics of society, economics, politics, culture, level of awareness of the people.

Democracy, a social value and an achievement of human race, depends on various factors, including the mechanism of social management and people’s degree of mastery. In practice, pluralism and a multi-party system are not the only factors that guarantee democracy. In any society, either uni-party politics or multi-party politics, if the ruling party and the state take an interest in the mechanism to ensure the people’s real rights and benefits, respect the people, and regard them as the holder of power, it is a truly democratic and liberal society. The Communist Party of Vietnam and the State have led in that way; they always respect social criticisms, but the point is that those must be constructive for the sake of the people and for the national interests. Our State represents the mastery of the people. At the same time, it is the one who realizes the Party’s political guidelines. Both the Party’s Platform and State Constitution confirm that “all power belongs to the people” and “working people are the masters of the country”. Possibly in a few organizations, there might be bad cadres who violate the mastery of the people. However, this is uncommon, not popular, and such rare phenomena can not be used to deny the fruits of democracy and freedom in Vietnam. Inflating and taking advantage of those incidents to provoke opposition are going against the national interests.

In economic field, in the name of social criticism they request that state economic sector and collective sector should not play the key role; and that we should not hold the concept of “socialist oriented” as it is too abstract to quantify, not yet clearly understood, and there is no specific pattern. They demand to promote privatization of national economy’s sectors. In this regard, our Party has pursued a consistent policy. That is “to complete mechanisms and policies to develop a strong private sector as one of the driving forces of the economy. To further develop private economic sector in most areas of the economy as planned in accordance with Vietnam’s law”. Taking advantage of this policy and social criticism, they claim a change in mechanisms and policies in order to facilitate the development of private sector, intentionally deny, find ways to weaken and disable state sector’s key role in the socialist-oriented market economy, which in fact is to derail the socialist orientation of the national economy, eliminating economic model to erase the socialist regime. The hostile forces’ plot is extremely sinister. When perfecting the socialist-oriented market economy, our Party holds that “this is a form of market economy that obeys rules of market economy and is based on, driven and dominated by the principles and nature of socialism”.

In reality, the effectiveness of socialist orientation has been proved in many areas. A number of international economic organizations have recognized Vietnam as the best in using loans and carrying out the “Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction” Program. People’s lives, particularly in remote and isolated areas have increasingly improved; thanks to “socialist orientation”. Socialist orientation is made to overcome shortcomings of market economy, balancing standards of living between regions, between mountainous, isolated, remote, disadvantaged regions and plains, and between social strata.

Social criticism continues in social life with positive signs, but we have to remain vigilant against the hostile forces’ acts of sabotage. Thus, authorities need to institutionalize activities of criticism and social criticism in the system of legal documents, clearly stating the subjects, scope, content, form, and mechanism for social criticism. In particular, it is necessary to attach importance to sanctions against the acts that make use of social criticism to undermine the Party, the State, people, and go against national interests. Additionally, we should strengthen the state control of social criticism; promote the Vietnam Father Front’s role, ensuring that the organization’s activities are in accordance with law to make contributions to enhancing the effectiveness of implementation of socio-economic objectives, protecting people’s legitimate rights and benefits, building and consolidating people’s government, strengthening the national unity, and ensuring national security and defence. Moreover, sectors and levels should further promote propagation to raise people’s awareness of social criticism in order to make sure that each social criticism is constructive, honest, scientific, objective and practical. Successful implementation of above-mentioned measures is the best method to promote the positive aspect of social criticism, preventing and thwarting the hostile forces’ plot making contribution to successfully completing the cause of the Homeland construction and protection in the new situation.

Manh Dzung