The Brigade 139 under the Signal Corps is a strategic-level mobile General Signal Station of the Ministry of National Defence tasked with ensuring regular communication, maintaining combat readiness, and broadcasting significant political events of the Party, the State, and the Military. At the same time, it is assigned to ensure communication for the Ministry of National Defence to lead and direct exercises, natural disaster and epidemic prevention and control as well as search and rescue. Its forces operate in many different regions and it is confronted with a lot of difficulties in logistics support. Hence, in order to fulfil their mission, cadres and soldiers of the Brigade must be self-conscious to abide by the State’s law, the Military’s discipline, and their unit’s regulations. Being fully aware of this fact, the Brigade’s Party Committee and Command have always focused their leadership and direction on improving the effectiveness of law propagation, dissemination, and education for troops as a central measure to improve the unit’s performance of all assigned tasks.

First of all, the Brigade has directed its offices and units to thoroughly grasp higher echelons’ resolutions and directives, particularly the Directive 04/CT-BQP, dated February 9^th, 2019 by the Minister of National Defence on “strengthening discipline management and education and preventing violation of law and serious violation of discipline within the Vietnam People’s Army,” the General Staff’s Directive 07/CT-TM, dated March 10^th, 2020 on realising “the year of discipline - 2020,” the Directive 8170/CT-BTL, dated December 8^th, 2016 by the Signal Corps Commander on “enhancing discipline management and education within the Signal Corps,” the Signal Corps Commissar’s Directive 1477/CT-BTL, dated March 18^th, 2014 on “promoting law propagation, dissemination, and education within the Signal Corps” as well as special resolutions by the Signal Corps Party Committee Standing Board on law propagation, dissemination, and education. Based on such documents, the Brigade’s Party Committee has issued a specialised resolution, while party committees and commands at all levels have concretised that resolution into their own resolutions and plans in accordance with each office and unit’s particularities and task requirements. Offices and units within the Brigade have organised political activities to introduce all-level resolutions and directives on discipline management and education and safety assurance to all cadres, party members, and the masses. In the process, significance has been attached to heightening the role of cadres, party members, and especially the key ones in proposing measures to inspect and improve law propagation, dissemination, and education. Due attention has been paid to turning law propagation, dissemination, and education into a routine task to raise troops’ law-abiding awareness and culture. When assessing the results of their leadership over law propagation, dissemination and education in their monthly, quarterly resolutions, party organisations have opportunely supplemented their action programmes. The Brigade’s Party Committee has assigned the political office to advise party committees and commands at all levels on adhering to and executing the programme of law propagation, dissemination and education.

A forum on military standard order building and discipline management

As the Brigade always manoeuvres for its missions in a large area, the Brigade’s Command has directed offices and units to renew and diversify the contents, forms, and methods of law propagation, dissemination, and education. More specifically, offices and units have provided full-time law propagation, dissemination and education courses and ensured sufficient contents and duration for the forces whose task is stable. Emphasis has been placed on introducing articles of law, directives, guiding documents, and regulations on discipline management, such as the Law on Vietnam People’s Army Officers (2014), the Penal Code (2015), amended and supplemented in 2017, the Road Traffic Law (2008), the Law on Prevention and Control of Harms of Liquor and Beer Abuse (2019), and the Directive 103/CT-BQP, dated November 28^th, 2019 by the Minister of National Defence on “continuing to strengthen discipline management and education and ensure safety within the Vietnam People’s Army.” Heightening a sense of responsibility for their work, law instructors at all levels have carefully prepared their lesson plans, renewed their teaching method, combined traditional teaching with the application of information technology, opened up subjects, increased discussions and debates, and used models and projectors, thereby ensuring the liveliness, attractiveness and persuasiveness of their lectures.  

The Brigade has adopted various forms and methods of law propagation, dissemination and education for its independent teams and stations, while bringing into play its facilities, information technology advantages, television, and visual aids to the utmost for this work to ensure that all cadres and soldiers would be equipped with good knowledge of law. Besides, the Brigade has designed clips and lectures of law dissemination and education on its website to draw the attention of cadres and soldiers. It has required its offices and units to develop plans for refresher courses and select good cadres to attend such courses to enable them to well perform the tasks of inspection, military training, political education, and law dissemination and education simultaneously. As a result, those cadres at the Brigade’s teams and stations have successfully fulfilled their specialised mission and well carried out the work of law propagation, dissemination and education, which has helped save the unit’s human resources and materials. Offices, units, teams and stations of the Brigade have effectively applied the model of “learning one article of law on a weekly basis.” Grounded on the programme of law dissemination and education, units have selected and introduced basic articles of law directly relating to troops’ daily life and task. Every weekend, heads of teams and stations inspect and evaluate troops’ results of study to ensure that their inferiors could grasp the basic contents of each law or code.

Additionally, the Brigade has attached importance to aligning the work of law dissemination and education with political education and ideological management via political meetings, the Political and Cultural Day at grass-roots level, and the monthly Legal Study Day in order to renew and make this work more attractive to troops. “Law bookcases” at the Brigade’s library and Ho Chi Minh hall have been well maintained with hundreds of books and newspapers for troops to read and study. On a monthly basis, books and newspapers are exchanged between teams and stations so that cadres and soldiers could access and study more types of legal documents. The handbook titled “questions about a number of articles of law and answers” designed by the Signal Corps’ Coordinating Council for Law Dissemination and Education has been used as a guide for troops to deal with situations relating to discipline and law. The evaluation of troops’ knowledge of law and their study results has been seriously, closely organised with a combination of written, multiple-choice, and oral tests. On an annual basis, all cadres and soldiers pass such tests and 80% of them achieve merit or distinction. On a quarterly basis, the Brigade invites officials from the Regional Military Procuracy, the Regional Military Court, the Signal Corps’ Criminal Investigation Office, and the Public Security Office of Luong Son district (Hoa Binh province) to deliver specialised topics relating to law and discipline both inside and outside the Military to its cadres and soldiers so that they would be self-aware to observe the Military’s discipline and the State’s law.

The Brigade’s Party Committee and Command have directed offices, units, teams and stations to well carry out the mass mobilisation work and cooperate with localities’ party committees, authorities, sectors and unions in law propagation, dissemination and education for locals. Doing so has allowed the Brigade to cement its close-knit bond with the people and localities, make contributions to building a safe, strong stationed area, and prevent social evils from penetrating into the unit.

In addition to those above-mentioned measures, the Brigade’s Party Committee and Command have closely combined law propagation, dissemination and education with discipline management, military standard order building, emulation movements and campaigns. Each affiliate of the Brigade has always grasped each soldier’s ideological situation, task performance, social relationships, and observance of discipline. Every month and quarter, all offices and units submit their reports to the Brigade as the basis for developing measures to educate and manage troops. The regulations on prohibiting officers, professional service men and women, and employees from getting drunk and drinking alcohol during working hours have been stringently maintained. Competent forces of the Brigade and its affiliates have regularly, strictly inspected staff members’ compulsory licenses. Commanders of offices and units have used different “channels” to grasp the situation of their affiliates, particularly independent teams and stations to opportunely rectify and strictly handle violations of discipline and order. Emulation movements of the Brigade have been maintained closely and become an incentive for its units’ good task performance and troops’ self-improvement. Offices and units have effectively implemented the Directive 05-CT/TW by the 12^th Politburo and the 12^th Party Central Committee’s Resolution No.4 in tandem with the Campaigns, namely “promoting tradition, devoting talent, deserving to be Uncle Ho’s soldiers in the new period” and “managing and exploiting weapons and technical equipment sustainably, safely, economically, and ensuring traffic safety” as an important criterion for assessing, commending and rewarding each individual and collective.

Thanks to those synchronous and practical measures, over the years, the Brigade 139’s quality of law propagation, dissemination and education has been raised. Cadres and soldiers have made a huge positive change in complying with the State’s law and the Military’s discipline. The number of violations has been sharply reduced. There has been no serious violation of discipline or safety regulations during training. The rate of normal violations of discipline has been below 0.2%. The effectiveness of law propagation, dissemination and education has greatly contributed to the Brigade’s successful performance of its central political task. In 2020, the Brigade was given the title of comprehensively strong, “exemplary, typical” unit by the Ministry of National Defence; it was presented with the title of “Determined to Win Unit” by the Signal Corps Command. Those achievements will provide a solid foundation for the Brigade to keep enhancing the quality of law propagation, dissemination, and education and make itself “revolutionary, regular, seasoned, modern,” and capable of fulfilling all assigned missions.

Col. NGUYEN NGOC PHUONG, Commissar of the Brigade