Self-criticism and criticism are unique features of the working class’s new-style Party, an operating principle of the Party, an immanent need of party organisations and members, and law of evolution of the Communist Party of Viet Nam (CPV). Consequently, increased vigilance, clear recognition, and proactive struggle against hostile forces’, reactionaries’, and political opportunists’ allegations that distort and deny the operating principle of self-criticism and criticism within the Party are vital, urgent tasks in Party building today.

1. Adducing shortcomings in self-criticism and criticism of some party committees and organisations, hostile forces, reactionaries, and political opportunists try to claim that self-criticism and criticism within the Party, in essence, aim to “exaggerate strengths,” “hide weaknesses,” “flatter” and “toady to each other.” In fact, these are allegations with dark political intentions or at least they are at a low level, inadequate, incorrect, one-sided evaluation and judgement, deliberate distortion and denial of objectives and nature of our Party’s principle of self-criticism and criticism.

Recently, in light of Party-building requirements and implementation of the Resolution of the 4^th Plenum of the Party Central Committee (12^th Tenure), the work of self-criticism and criticism has been carried out strictly and methodically in the entire Party, from the Central to grassroots levels, from party committees to all cadres and party members and contributed to the struggle against wrong thoughts and acts in order to warn and gradually push back corruption and wrongdoings. Many serious, complex corruption cases have been exposed, investigated, prosecuted, and put on trial strictly, thus gaining public support. Nevertheless, there remain manifestations of indulgence, evasion, fear of causing friction, especially criticism of the higher echelon at some party committees and organisations. Specifically, there is a tendency towards criticism while showing a reckless disregard for self-criticism, or there is self-criticism but it focuses on analysing and interpreting strengths and achievements without saying the truth or daring to admit weaknesses. When the weaknesses are pointed out, there is a lack of sincerity. In some places, criticism is exploited to flatter and please each other or to slander, smear, and criticise cadres and party members. These phenomena are not prevalent or do not reflect the nature, objectives, political significance, and humanism of self-criticism and criticism. Also, they cannot be used as a pretext for denying outcomes of self-criticism and criticism in party organisations at all levels in recent years.

In fact, given the spirit of receptiveness, straightforwardness, correctly assessing truth, and telling truth clearly, the work of self-criticism and criticism within the Party is always prepared and conducted in a meticulous, serious, close, and careful manner. Strengths and weaknesses are analysed thoroughly. Limitations, shortcomings, and wrongdoings of party organisations and members from Central to grassroots levels, in all branches and fields are pointed out. Violations are reviewed, concluded, and punished strictly without “forbidden ground,” gaining the support of cadres, party members, and people. The entire Party has inspected nearly 265,000 party organisations and over 1,100,000 party members by means of self-criticism, criticism, inspection, and supervision since early March 2021, in which over 1,300 party organisations and nearly 70,000 party members were disciplined for their violations. The Party Central Committee, the Politburo, the Secretariat, and the Central Inspection Commission alone have disciplined 10 party organisations and 229 party members. Consequently, allegations that self-criticism and criticism within the Party currently aim to ““exaggerate strengths,” “flatter” and “toady to each other” are totally incorrect.

2. Hostile forces, reactionaries, and political opportunists falsely claim that, in fact, self-criticism and criticism within the Party are “internal struggles” with no mercy among political dissidents as well as interest groups. First of all, it is necessary to affirm that these are incorrect, reactionary, anti-science allegations. The work of self-criticism and criticism always takes place in a certain party organisation and is carried out strictly, seriously, openly, and transparently on the basis of principles, especially the party nature, for the Party’s goals and ideals, common interests. It is completely pure, impartial, by no means factionalism, localism, and individualism.

The key difference between party members’ and organisations’ self-criticism and criticism with individuals’, interest groups’, political parties’, and other organisations’ “purges” is the objective of this activity. Here, it is necessary to perceive that self-criticism and criticism within the Party aim to identify strengths, limitations, weaknesses, causes of the strengths and weaknesses, and the way to deal with these weaknesses for the sake of development, progress, and maturity of each individual and party organisation, the entire Party’s robustness, common goals and interests, thereby making the corps of party members increasingly progressive and mature, party organisations more and more united, purer, stronger, capable of successfully completing their assigned tasks. Furthermore, the work of self-criticism and criticism within the Party is usually conducted openly, transparently, democratically, and in the spirit of comradeship. Self-criticism and criticism are always connected with love between people and people. It is the love of comrades that enables cadres and party members to better themselves after wrongdoings or weaknesses to fulfil missions entrusted by the Party and organisations. Consequently, when criticising their comrades, they do not use offensive remarks, which may give their comrades a complex. President Ho Chi Minh recommended that when cadres and party members criticised themselves and their comrades, they had to do it in a strict, thorough, and honest manner without indulgence, adding or cutting details; identify both strengths and weaknesses; refrain from using sarcastic, acrimonious remarks. Criticism is for deeds and not necessarily for persons themselves. Therefore, no one can distort, slander, and deny the CPV’s principle and work of self-criticism and criticism.

3. Hostile forces, reactionaries, and political opportunists try their best to advertise an allegation that self-criticism and criticism in many places are mostly boilerplate, lack of fighting and educational spirit, usually conducted according to plans and directions from higher echelons. Basically, there is a trend for high consensus when conducting a meeting, review, and vote.

Manifestations of boilerplate and taking harmony as the best choice in party members’ and organisations’ self-criticism and criticism really exist but are particular phenomena and not widespread. Those phenomena do not reflect nature of the Party’s self-criticism and criticism. Self-criticism and criticism within the Party must be carried out in accordance with principles, educational, convincing, objective, honest, sincere, open, concrete, practical, and timely. Processes, tasks, and contents of self-criticism and criticism are prepared and realised meticulously, seriously, closely, regularly, and in accordance with principles, especially the principle of democratic centralism.

Given the spirit of strict self-criticism and criticism, the Resolution of the 4th Plenum of the Party Central Committee (12^th Tenure) clearly points out that self-criticism and criticism in many places are boilerplate. There are still manifestations of indulgence, evasion, fear of causing friction. Some cadres and party members lack self-awareness of weaknesses and responsibilities for their assigned tasks. The Resolution of the Party Central Committee (13^th Tenure) specifies that, in some places, sufficient attention is not paid to party meetings; meetings are still boilerplate; the fighting spirit in self-criticism and criticism is still low. The evidence proves that the CPV is always straightforward, looks directly at truth, and evaluates limitations and shortcomings in self-criticism and criticism correctly, laying the foundation for working out solutions to better implementation of self-criticism and criticism. The CPV requests party committees and organisations to regularly raise cadres’ and party members’ awareness of the position and importance of self-criticism and criticism to party building. Self-criticism and criticism are both revolutionary, scientific, and humanism, which facilitates people’s improvement. They must also develop plans, strictly maintain and carry out self-criticism and criticism to assess and grade quality of party organisations and members; heighten the role of the leading people; regularly renew contents and forms of self-criticism and criticism to make this work increasingly substantive, contributing to prevention and stop of the degradation in political ideology, morality, lifestyle, “self-evolution,” “self-transformation” within the Party, increased leadership capabilities and combat power of party organisations, cadres, and party members, making our Party truly ethical and advanced, serving as the ground for rejecting all hostile forces’ distortion and denial of the principle of self-criticism and criticism within the Party.

Sr. Col. NGUYEN VAN TUONG, PhD, Political Officer College