Military scientific and technical cadres constitute an important part of the contingent of cadres in the Military. To build this staff with political zeal, good professional competence, and pure morality, it is necessary to well perform the work of cadre assessment.

Over the past years, a contingent of scientific and technical cadres across the Military has unceasingly developed together with the improvements in their political zeal, morality, research capacity, and task performance. That outcome has been attributed to the all-level party committees and commands’ accurate assessment and proper use of scientific and technical cadres, which has created a favourable condition for this staff to improve their morality and talent, the quality of their researches, and their capacity to master, exploit, study, innovate, maintain, repair, and upgrade weapons and technical equipment to make significant contributions to enhancing the Military’s synergy and combat strength.

However, the work of evaluating scientific and technical cadres by some party committees, offices, and units, particularly at grass-roots level has yet to be comprehensive. They have even assessed the capability of this staff incorrectly and expressed their personal feeling and prejudice. Those weaknesses have erected barriers to promoting scientific and technical cadres’ motivation, capacity, and role in the performance of their function and task. Those weaknesses have derived from several party committees and commands’ disobedience to the principle of democratic centralism, self-criticism, and criticism and from the bureaucratic, subjective, and unjust evaluation of scientific and technical cadres.

At present, the task of building a revolutionary, regular, elite, gradually modern Army with several forces moving forward to modernity is imposing higher requirements on the contingent of cadres. To fulfil this task, the Party, State, Central Military Commission (CMC), and Ministry of National Defence (MND) have always put store by building a contingent of cadres in general, a pool of military scientific and technical cadres in particular. Obviously, the work of assessing cadres will provide a basis for effectively using the personnel, improving the strength of organizations and cadres, and promoting the latter’s strong points, qualities, and capabilities. On the contrary, wrong evaluation of cadres will lead to discord form within, undermine their motivation and faith, constrict their talent, and seriously negatively impact on their task performance.

To correctly evaluate the contingent of military scientific and technical cadres, party committees, commissars, and competent offices should grasp and fulfil the requirements for renewing the work of cadre assessment in a consistent, continuous, multi-dimensional manner, by conducting surveys, releasing the results of evaluation, and comparing those results with the corresponding positions, with a focus on the following.

First, raising the public awareness of the role of the assessment step in the personnel work. According to the procedure of the Party’s personnel work, the personnel assessment provides the premise, the personnel planning acts as the basis, the personnel rotation serves as a breakthrough step, and the training of cadres represents the long-term and short-term requirements for the effective use of cadres. Reality has revealed that scientific and technical cadres, particularly elementary scientific and technical ones and top experts often own distinguished qualities and ability to work independently. They have “big ego”, express their opinions straightforwardly, and dislike conservatism. Thus, the one-sided, wrong, prejudiced assessment will discourage them from fulfilling their task.

It could be said that successfully performing the work of cadre assessment will ensure the effectiveness and quality of cadre use and arrangement. Being fully aware of this matter will enable party committees, commissars, and competent offices at all levels to adopt specific measures for closely directing the work of cadre assessment and to overcome weaknesses in this work. Doing so will also help commanders and competent offices to grasp and understand each cadre as the basis for training, arranging, and using scientific and technical cadres effectively to meet the requirements for modernizing the Military; it will enable each cadre to fully understand their weak and strong points to fulfil their assigned task.

Second, continuing to build and complete the criteria for assessing scientific and technical cadres properly. Scientific and technical cadres are deployed according to offices and units’ function and task across the Military in accordance with their speciality and their offices and units’ organizational structure. Building the criteria for assessing this staff is a matter of importance and the responsibility of party committees and commands at all levels. The criteria act as the instrument and basis for commanders and competent offices to evaluate cadres in a just, objective, comprehensive, and accurate fashion. The criteria must include the viewpoints of the Party, CMC, and party committees at each level; they must be basic, comprehensive, specific and relevant to each unit’s function and each cadre’s duties. Also, the criteria must be the basis for comprehensively, specifically, accurately assessing cadres’ political zeal, morality, professional competence, working style and method, and task performance. In this regard, great value should be attached to the criterion related to cadres’ research capacity and the quality of executing projects and programs on developing and applying science and technology to upgrading weapons, means, and technical equipment for all military activities, particularly for training and combat readiness.

Third, respecting the truth and avoiding personal feeling and prejudice when assessing cadres. It is important to assess the whole work process of a cadre, instead of just one task performed by them. In addition to the criteria, when assessing military scientific and technical cadres, party committees, commands, and competent offices should consider each cadre’ results of their study and work process. It is not fair to only use the results of one task or one period as the basis for long-term assessment or the results of one scientific task as the yardstick for evaluating the qualities and capacity of a cadre. Therefore, in the work of cadre assessment, it is essential to ensure the objectivity, comprehensiveness, and historicity. According to Ho Chi Minh, it is not certain that a cadre with a mistake in the past will commit other ones forever. He also believed that the past, present, and future of a person were not always the same.

To evaluate cadres accurately, offices and units at all levels should closely combine this work with the analysis of party member quality. Prior to the appointment, rotation, and deployment, it is important to take into account the performance of cadres’ duties and tasks (including the commanding, managing task, the research mission, and the execution of scientific and technical projects). Doing so will help party committees and commands at all levels to use cadres properly and to detect new factors and talents so that they could develop the plan to train those cadres to be good commanders, managers, and researchers. Moreover, it is vital to clearly point out the signs of degradation in political ideology, ethics, and lifestyle as well as those of “self-evolution” and “self-transformation” and to resolutely fight against the insufficient regard for assessing cadres’ political ideology, ethics, and lifestyle. At the same time, consideration should be given to encouraging self-criticism and self-evaluation to show military scientific and technical cadres’ weaknesses and propose the remedial measures.

Fourth, frequently exercising democracy and promoting collective knowledge and role of organizations and individuals within offices and units. Party organizations, particularly all-level party committees and commands are in charge of the personnel work. To assess cadres correctly, it is impossible to rely on the opinion of one person or several persons. Thus, all-level party committees should stringently follow the principle of democratic centralism in the work of cadre assessment. They should effectively implement the Regulations on Grass-Roots Level Democracy and take measures for strengthening democracy and promoting the role of organizations, namely scientific council, youth union, women’s union, and trade union in evaluating cadres properly. All-level party committees and authorities should attach significance to assigning researches on dealing with difficulties in performing the task or new, thorny topics to cadres and conduct polls on cadres’ political zeal, ethics, working method and style, and task performance as an important source of information for assessing this staff.

Fifth, well performing the work of inspection and supervision. It is essential to be fully aware that supervision must be expanded while inspection must be focalized in a comprehensive, open, democratic, close, accurate manner, to strictly follow the regulations and procedures for inspection and supervision, to proactively supplement and complete the mechanism for inspection and supervision to make this work effective. In the process, it is imperative to carefully consider the political task and duties of each cadre, clearly show their weaknesses, and strictly handle their violations. Due attention should be paid to resolutely dismissing or taking disciplinary action against the scientific and technical cadres who are conceited, conservative, and lazy in research and self-improvement as well as those who work ineffectively or show moral weaknesses or especially violate the State’s law.

Cadre assessment is a difficult task. Thus, adopting those measures mentioned above will contribute to helping all-level party committees, commands, and competent offices to accurately, comprehensively cadres, raise the quality of the personnel work, and build a contingent of “both red and expert” scientific and technical cadres within the Military.

Maj. Le Minh Son, MA