Legal dissemination and education organised to improve commune-level key officials’ law-abiding awareness and responsibility for law enforcement represent a matter of importance to building a strong socialist rule-of-law state. As for the capital city of Hanoi - the main political and administrative centre of the country, this matter becomes extremely important and urgent.

Commune-level key officials within the area of Hanoi play a role of paramount importance to the successful implementation of the Party’s guidelines, the State’s laws and policies, and the city’s targets of socio-economic and cultural development and defence and security. To well perform that role, those officials must have comprehensive qualities and competence. More importantly, they must develop a law-abiding awareness and their capability in law enforcement. Hence, over the years, all-level party committees and authorities within the city have drastically, synchronously adopted various measures to enhance commune-level key officials’ knowledge, law-abiding awareness, public service ethics, and responsibility for performing tasks, and they have achieved rather comprehensive results. It should be noted that the efficiency of leadership and direction and the task performance of committees, sectors, unions, and organisations have been gradually improved. The degradation in political ideology, ethics, and lifestyle as well as the signs of “self-evolution” and “self-transformation” have been prevented and repelled. There has been a decrease in violations of the Party’s Charter, the State’s laws, and public service ethics. Meanwhile, commune-level key officials’ capacity to enforce the Constitution and laws has been considerably raised. However, in addition to those recorded results, several localities have yet to pay due attention to legal dissemination and education. Contents and forms of education have yet to be proper or make a solid change in law-abiding awareness. The law enforcement capacity of some commune-level key officials has yet to meet their task requirements. Against that backdrop, all-level party committees, authorities, and heads of offices within the city should continue further boosting the quality of legal dissemination and education for commune-level key officials via practical, synchronous measures, with a focus on a number of main measures as follows.

First, enhance all-level party committees and authorities’ leadership and direction over legal dissemination and education. This measure serves as a determinant to the quality and effectiveness of legal dissemination and education for commune-level key officials within the city. To that end, the Municipal Party Committee and the Municipal People’s Committee should continue grasping higher echelons’ documents on legal dissemination and education, particularly Conclusion 80-KL/TW, dated June 20th, 2020 by the Party Central Committee’s Secretariat on continuing implementing Directive 32-CT/TW on strengthening the Party’s leadership over legal dissemination and education to raise officials and citizens’ law-abiding awareness, and the Law on Legal Dissemination and Education. Doing so will help raise the awareness and responsibility of district-level party committees and authorities and heads of commissions, sectors, and unions towards legal dissemination and education for commune-level key officials. At the same time, the Municipal Coordinating Council for Legal Dissemination and Education should cooperate with judicial offices in grasping higher echelons’ guiding documents and realities of legal dissemination and education to opportunely assist the Municipal Party Committee and the Municipal People’s Committee in promulgating directives and guiding documents on this work in accordance with each group of officials and each locality’s particularities.

Grounded on the Municipal Party Committee’s direction and plans of the Municipal People’s Committee, district-level people’s committees should develop programmes of legal dissemination and education for commune-level key officials in a close, uniformed, scientific manner. In the process, significance should be attached to making lists of learners, organising refresher courses for law instructors, maintaining coordination between relevant offices, and promoting the core role of coordinating councils for legal dissemination and education, Fatherland Fronts, and politico-social organisations within the city. At the same time, it is important to regard legal dissemination and education for key officials as one of the central tasks of the whole political system. Moreover, district-level party committees and authorities should frequently conduct inspections and supervisions to opportunely handle issues on legal dissemination and education, while taking the results of legal dissemination and education for commune-level key officials as an important yardstick for assessing the task performance of organisations and individuals on a yearly basis.

Second, attach great value to correctly identifying and renewing contents, forms, and methods of legal dissemination and education. Correctly identifying contents of legal dissemination and education will enable officials to have basic legal knowledge and meet their task requirements. Therefore, all-level party committees and authorities and heads of commissions, sectors, and unions within the city should identify contents of legal dissemination and education in a scientific, proper, comprehensive but focalised fashion, with a focus on new legal documents and directives, weaknesses, and missing contents. A part from issues relating to grass-roots level officials’ functions, tasks, and public service ethics, such as civil, administrative, and economic laws, regulations on receiving citizens and settling citizens’ complaints and denunciations, statutory regulations on state management and social management, working regulations, and higher echelons’ resolutions, directives, and commands, emphasis should be placed on issues of urgency imposed by practice in accordance with each locality’s particularities, especially regulations on protecting citizens’ rights and legitimate benefits.

There is a fact that law-related contents constitute “rigid” principles and regulations. Therefore, during legal dissemination and education, specialised offices should continue diversifying forms and methods of dissemination and education. Due attention should be paid to introducing special topics and effectively organising debates, question & answer sessions, and examinations to arouse learners’ enthusiasm for study and encourage self-study. In addition to continuing maintaining refresher courses, conferences, dialogues, specialised meetings, and news briefings and promoting the roles of radio and television stations and press agencies, all-level party committees and authorities should focus their leadership and direction on organising specialised legal education, holding legal knowledge contests, exploiting legal bookcases, and supplementing new law-related books and documents to meet their officials’ demand for study.

Third, pay due regard to improving knowledge and skills of officials in charge of legal dissemination and education. Unlike contents of political and ideological education, the work of legal dissemination and education requires a high degree of accuracy, and it must adhere to legal normative documents. For that reason, all-level party committees and authorities within city should focus on directing commissions, sectors, unions, organisations, and coordinating councils for legal dissemination and education to frequently improve the capacity, knowledge, working methods, and skills of their officials in charge of legal dissemination and education. The training of those officials must be comprehensive and include a combination of general training and group-based, specialised, and intensive training. Consideration should be given to building a contingent of officials in charge of legal dissemination and education both qualitatively and quantitatively with broad knowledge of law and scientific teaching skills. Additionally, it is essential to create a favourable condition for those officials to attend legal training courses held by higher echelons so that they could become experts in legal dissemination and education. However, those officials should actively, self-consciously improve their political qualities, morality, lifestyle, experience, legal knowledge, working method, and pedagogical skills in order to successfully fulfil their assigned task.

Fourth, encourage key officials to actively better their own legal knowledge and capacity to deal with law-related situations. This measure plays a decisive role in the quality and effectiveness of legal dissemination and education for commune-level key officials. To that end, all-level party committees and authorities within the city should regularly grasp criteria for commune-level key officials’ legal knowledge and law enforcement capacity. Due attention should be paid to encouraging commune-level key officials to actively self-study and comprehensively improve their political qualities, lifestyle, etiquette, public service ethics, working method, and settlement of law-related common situations. Importance should be attached to resolutely preventing commune-level key officials from making perfunctory efforts or taking advantage of self-study and self-improvement to disregard their higher echelons’ roles of orientation, organisation, and inspection. Besides, it is necessary to clearly identify criteria and targets of self-study and self-improvement for commune-level key officials and take the results of self-study, self-improvement, and observance of law and discipline as an important yardstick for assessing the task performance of each organisation and individual in each year and period. Party committees, authorities, and heads of offices should create a favourable condition for officials to study law-related contents by their own.

A part from those above-mentioned measures, emphasis should be placed on consolidating relationships between superiors and subordinates as well as between colleagues under statutes and the country’s tradition, closely managing officials’ observance of law and discipline, and building a healthy legal cultural environment within offices and units.

LUONG HUE MINH, Deputy Head of Ha Dong District’s Legal Commission