The Tank Brigade 201 (the Armoured Corps) is stationed in the area of 3 districts, namely Chuong My and Quoc Oai under Hanoi city and Luong Son under Hoa Binh province. This area has a rather rapid economic growth rate but faces potential complex issues on social evils and hostile forces’ sabotage. Meanwhile, many sections of the Brigade are dispersed to perform many different missions, namely field training, mass mobilization, and other contingency tasks. It has a large number of officers and professional service-people with a great demand for taking a leave and participating in traffic to settle private business. Therefore, the Brigade’s staff members would easily violate the State’s law, the Military discipline and traffic safety, thereby directly affecting its task performance. Fully understanding that, over the past years, while maintaining the order for discipline management, the Brigade’s Party and Command have always set store by legal dissemination and education and considered it as an important solution to improving cadres and troops’ legal knowledge and culture and their observance of law and discipline, contributing to making the Brigade comprehensively strong.
Thoroughly grasping higher echelons’ resolutions, directives, plans and guiding documents, the Brigade’s Party Committee and Command have concretized those documents into guidelines, measures and plans for legal dissemination and education at each level. Importance has been attached to identifying correct content, diversifying forms and methods, and combining legal education with regularity building and the management of discipline and troops’ ideology and social relationships. The Brigade has promoted the synergy of organizations and forces within the unit and cooperated with local party committees, authorities, unions and people in the stationed area in making legal dissemination and education practically and sustainably effective. The Coordinating Council for legal dissemination and education has been regularly consolidated and promoted its role in advising the Brigade’s Party Committee and Command on putting this work in order and particularly determining the content and selecting the form and method for legal dissemination and education in accordance with each group of troops and the Brigade’s situation and tasks in each period.
In 2018, the Brigade has organized courses for its staff to study 9 special legal topics, including 6 topics under the higher echelon’s plan and 3 topics under the Brigade’s plan (preventing and combating soldiers’ inability to pay debts in grass-roots units; studying and following Ho Chi Minh’s example on Military discipline in grass-roots units; improving the quality of legal propagation, dissemination and education in grass-roots units in the current situation), while compiling 1 ask-answer legal document. In the process, the Brigade has required legal dissemination and education to be diverse, visual, easy to understand, and attractive; attached great value to conveying the legal content and messages via activities, such as dialogues, cultural-artistic exchange programs, soldiers’ birthday celebrations, and games on national holidays. The order for monthly “Legal Day” and collection of legal documents and books has been strictly maintained and attracted the participation of a large number of troops. Besides, the Brigade has promoted cultural institutions, such as library, Ho Chi Minh’s hall, legal bookshelf, internal radio system, and the system of banners and bulletin boards. Legal books and documents have been rotated among bookshelves and libraries of offices and units to better meet the demand of troops. Also, offices and units have organized extracurricular activities for cadres and soldiers to improve their knowledge.
Notably, the Brigade has adopted many effective models for legal dissemination and education, such as “5 must-knows in the week”, “Uncle Ho’s soldiers and traffic culture”. An advantage of these models is that soldiers could make use of days off and breaks to study and improve legal knowledge. Typically, the model of “5 must-knows in the week” is aimed to equip cadres and soldiers with updated knowledge and information about all aspects of the social life, the Corps and Military’s tradition, the State’s law, Military discipline, and regulations of the Brigade’s affiliates. Weekly, offices and units select and submit “5 must-knows” to the Brigade’s Political Office for approval, and then introduced these things to their staff after daily order for television watching and on Sunday evening. The “5 must-knows” are hung in rest rooms, meeting rooms, Ho Chi Minh’s halls so that troops could easily see, read, study and remember. Offices and units inspect these things during flag salute ceremonies. On a monthly basis, the “5 must-knows” are saved, and yearly they are bound into books and put in the legal bookshelf of each office and unit.
The model of “Uncle Ho’s soldiers and traffic culture” is aimed to raise cadres and soldiers’ sense of observance of the Road Traffic Law. Based on the question bank created by commanders of offices and units, the basic points of the law on road traffic have been circulated to soldiers via different forms, such as “learn one law article everyday”, “one traffic situation every week”, and “traffic barrier”.
Under the motto: “small rains lay great dust”, those models have helped raise cadres and soldiers’ awareness and responsibility towards conforming to the State’s law and the Military discipline, promote the movement on self-study and self-improvement, and improve the traffic culture within offices and units. As a result, over the past years, the Brigade has ensured absolute safety and had no serious violation of law and discipline while the solidarity and consensus among cadres and soldiers have been heightened. In 2018, the Brigade was recommended for the Government’s Emulation Flag by the Armoured Corps Command.
However, several party committees and command’s awareness and responsibility towards this work has not been full; some units have not been active in this work; a number of contents have not been relevant to the tasks and the demands of troops; the form has yet to be attractive. Some lecturers have not been expert in legal dissemination and education; their sense of self-study and self-improvement has yet to be high; due regard has yet to be paid to training a contingent of lecturers.
Therefore, the Brigade has drawn several lessons on leading, directing and performing the work of legal dissemination and education as follows.
First, party committees, commissars and commands at all levels must regularly raise their awareness and responsibility. It is necessary to enhance party committees and commands’ leadership and direction and associate the responsibility of each party committee member and commander with the performance of this work in each office and unit.
Second, to encourage the role of the Political Office and the Coordinating Council for legal dissemination and education in giving advice to the Brigade’s Party Committee and Command as well as in instructing and inspecting units’ performance of this work in a scientific, close, and uniformed manner. It is important to promote all-level cadres’ role model-setting responsibility for the observance of law and discipline; to well manage the relationships between cadres and soldiers, superiors and inferiors, soldiers and soldiers. Due attention should be paid to ensuring troops’ mental and material life and building healthy cultural environment within the units. Significance should be attached to combining legal dissemination and education with regularity building, discipline management and the implementation of the 12th Politburo’s Directive 05-CT/TW on studying and following Ho Chi Minh’s ideology and moral example and the Campaign “promote tradition, devote talent, deserve to be Uncle Ho’s soldiers” within units.
Third, to actively renew and make education content, program, form and method easy to remember, understand, and follow and relevant to the characteristics and task requirements of each office and unit. It is essential to include legal dissemination and education in meetings, news briefings, cultural-artistic programs, and meetings of mass organizations, soldiers’ councils and cultural institutions. Besides, it is vital to combine legal dissemination and education with political education, ideological management, and grass-roots Politico-Spiritual Day; to strictly maintain the order and regulations under the motto of being “standardized, united, democratic, and disciplined”; to make a sustainable change in cadres and soldiers’ observance of law and discipline, ensuring that they “live and work under the Constitution and law”.
Fourth, importance should be attached to improving the quality of law lecturers, particularly their knowledge of law and hands-on experience, making their legal dissemination and education more attractive. Due regard should be paid to investing in equipment of libraries, reading rooms and clubs as well as supplementing legal documents on the bookshelves of offices and units.
The obtained results and drawn lessons provide the basis for the Brigade to put the work of legal dissemination and education in order and make it more effective, contributing to making the Brigade comprehensively strong and fulfilling all assigned tasks in the upcoming time.
Col. Nguyen Manh Hien, Deputy Commissar of the Brigade