All-level party congresses within the Military Party Organisation (MPO) constitute a deep and wide political campaign, asserting the development of the Vietnam People’s Army (VPA) in the past 80 years of construction and combat under the Party’s glorious flag. At the same time, it is a task of paramount importance, providing a prerequisite for realising the goal of building a revolutionary, regular, elite, modern VPA from 2030 onwards. Hence, all party committees, party organisations, cadres, and party members across the VPA must focus on well preparing and successfully organising all-level party congresses with great political responsibility.

The 11th Military Party Congress for the 2020 - 2025 tenure (photo: qdnd.vn)

Grasping and executing the 13^th Politburo’s Directive 35-CT/TW, dated 14 June 2024, and the Central Organisation Commission’s Guidance 27-HD/BTCTW, dated 26 August 2024, on all-level party congresses towards the 14^th National Party Congress, the General Department of Politics (GDP) has directed its Organisation Department to work with other competent offices to give advice to the Central Military Commission (CMC) Standing Board and leaders of the GDP on promulgating documents of leadership and direction over all-level military party congresses in accordance with the VPA’s particularities. All-level party congresses for the 2025 - 2030 tenure represent a deep and wide political campaign, a major political event of our Party and country, highlighted by comprehensive, significant achievements gained after nearly 40 years of Doi Moi (renovation). Those achievements have contributed to increasing the country’s potential, synergy, position, and prestige and cementing the people’s faith in the Party. As one of the largest party organisations nationwide, the MPO has various types of party organisations with a large number of party members who are scattered across the country, including the border, remote, isolated, sea, and island areas. Meanwhile, the entire Military is drastically executing the Politburo’s Resolution 05-NQ/TW, the CMC’s 230-NQ/QUTW, and plans by the Ministry of National Defence on building an adept, compact, strong VPA; many offices and units are experiencing merger, dissolution, and rearrangement, which imposes higher requirements on ideological, organisational, personnel, and policy work. Therefore, elaborately preparing and successfully organising all-level party congresses for the 2025 - 2030 tenure act as a central political task that will not only significantly contribute to the success of the 14^th National Party Congress, but also improve all-level party organisations’ leadership and combativeness to meet the requirements of VPA building and Fatherland protection in the new period. To continue to well prepare and successfully organise all-level party congresses within the MPO, party committees and organisations should focus their leadership and direction on several main measures as follows.

First, thoroughly grasping relevant directives and guiding documents by the Party Central Committee, the CMC, and the GDP, raising awareness and responsibility of cadres and party members towards all-level party congresses. As a wide and deep political campaign, all-level party congresses are aimed at reviewing and evaluating the outcome of party leadership, identifying new guidelines for leadership, and electing new executive committees; thus, grasping higher echelons’ directives and guiding documents on preparing and holding congresses is a matter of utmost importance to guaranteeing correct judgement, strict observance, and a synchronous implementation process among all party committees, party organisations, cadres, and party members from grass-roots to CMC levels. To that end, party committees and organisations should thoroughly grasp and introduce directives, regulations, and guiding documents by the Party Central Committee, the CMC, the GDP, and higher echelons on all-level party congresses for the 2025 - 2030 tenure to all cadres and party members in a close, serious way, with a focus on the Politburo’s Directive 35-CT/TW, dated 14 June 2024, the CMC Standing Board’s Directive 2960-CT/QUTW, dated 18 July 2024, and the GDP’s Guidance on all-level party congresses towards the 14^th National Party Congress. In this regard, it is necessary to grasp and strictly adhere to the requirements mentioned in those directives and guiding documents, particularly new points relating to congress documents, political reports, personnel work, congress agenda, and regulations on age range, criteria, party committee structure, and election. Due attention should be paid to carrying out propagation and education work to render cadres and party members fully aware of the importance of all-level party congresses as an occasion for tightening discipline, encouraging collective knowledge, creativity, and responsibility, and promoting the noble virtues of “Uncle Ho’s soldiers”. At the same time, cadres and party members should grasp and conform to directions given by the late General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong at the CMC’s 7^th Meeting (8 July 2024): “proactively making preparations for the 12^th Military Party Congress towards the 14^th National Party Congress,… considering this as one of the central tasks in the upcoming time”. Doing so will help bring into play knowledge, unity strength, and involvement of all organisations and forces in all steps and phases of party congresses. Offices and units should deal with the sign of “assigning all party congress-related work” to political agencies and political cadres, combating oversimplification, wastefulness, and formalism during congresses.

Second, concretising and designing documents of leadership, direction, and guidance in accordance with each party organisation. This measure plays an important role in the success of congresses. Therefore, all-level party committees should focus their leadership and direction on preparing party congresses under the Party’s principles and regulations, particularly the principle of democratic centralism. The authority and responsibility of party committees, party organisations, and key cadres at all levels should be promoted to concretise and issue documents of leadership, direction, and guidance in accordance with the characteristics and tasks of their offices and units. Due attention should be paid to establishing sub-committees for preparing and organising congresses, assigning party committee members to design congress documents, give instructions and inspect the preparation and organisation of inferior party congresses. Plans on organising some pilot party congresses to draw lessons should be made. Moreover, all-level party committees should grasp and strictly execute higher echelons’ directives, regulations, and guiding documents on internal political protection work, closely manage ideological developments of cadres, party members, and the masses, frequently effectively deal with arising issues among cadres and party members, especially within units experiencing merger, dissolution, or transference. Great value should be attached to proactively defending the Party’s ideological foundation and resolutely combating hostile forces’ sabotage strategy against all-level party congresses, particularly congress documents and personnel work.

Third, concentrating on raising the quality of congress documents, especially political reports. Documents and particularly political reports at party congresses demonstrate collective theoretical capacity and knowledge, outline party committees’ vision, provide orientations for development, and reveal the faith and aspirations of cadres, party members, and the masses within the entire MPO. According to the CMC’s final review of the 12^th Politburo’s Directive 35-CT/TW, dated 30 May 2019, on all-level party congresses towards the 13^th National Party Congress, all-level party committees and organisations well carried out this work. In the process, party committees promoted democracy, collected feedback from relevant organisations and experts, and conducted necessary surveys. Party committees’ self-review reports demonstrated great combativeness, serious criticism and self-criticism, clarified strong and weak points of collectives and individuals, heightened individual accountability, and set out effective remedial measures. Bringing into play those good results, all-level party committees and organisations should conform to higher echelons’ direction, the realisation of the resolution of the previous congress, and their units’ practical conditions to well prepare and submit political reports to the upcoming party congresses as an orientation for other documents. In addition to an honest, objective, comprehensive evaluation of the resolution of the previous congress, it is necessary to clarify strong and weak points, indicate causes of the weak points, and draw lessons for the process of leadership, direction, and implementation. At the same time, party committees and organisations should grasp major viewpoints and lines mentioned in the draft documents of the 14^th National Party Congress and higher echelons, while carefully considering their units’ peculiarities to identify goals, tasks, breakthroughs, and solutions for the new tenure in a feasible, scientific manner. In the process, it is important to promote democracy and collective knowledge, receive feedback from affiliated party organisations, cadres, party members, and mass organisations to forge unity and uniformity within offices and units.

Fourth, exercising leadership and direction over personnel work for party congresses. Members of new-tenure party committees must have typical political steadfastness, great competence, pure morality, healthy lifestyle, high prestige, innovative thinking, and great combativeness to meet their task requirements in the new period and successfully fulfil the resolutions of all-level party congresses and especially the 14^th National Party Congress. Delegates to higher-level party congresses must possess typical political qualities and great professional competence to make contributions to those congresses. Thus, in personnel preparations for party congresses, all-level party committees should thoroughly grasp and comply with criteria set for party committee members under the 13^th Politburo’s Directive 35-CT/TW as well as revolutionary moral standards of cadres and party members in the new period under the 13^th Party Central Committee’s Regulation 144-QĐ/TW, dated 9 May 2024, together with other relevant resolutions, directives, and regulations of the Party and the CMC. In this regard, emphasis should be placed on grasping the CMC’s Resolution 109-NQ/QUTW, dated 11 February 2019, on building a pool of military cadres, particularly at operational and strategic levels to meet the task requirements in the new period, the CMC’s Regulation 842-QĐ/QUTW, dated 6 August 2018 on standards, job titles, and evaluation criteria for cadres of the VPA, and the CMC Standing Board’s Conclusion 111-KL/QUTW, dated 12 February 2019 on continuing to enhance the leadership capacity and combativeness of grass-roots party organisations and the quality of cadres and party members within the VPA in the new situation. Personnel preparations and elections must be carried out in a synchronous, close, democratic, scientific, objective, transparent way under the Party’s principles and regulations. Elections of party committee members must be based on great unity and uniformity; steps of those elections must be taken in a cautious way to ensure “the right persons”. In addition to on-the-spot personnel, it is important to consider electing cadres who are deployed from other offices and units or reinforcing party committees after congresses. At each level, there should be three age ranges, with priority given to female and ethnic minority cadres. In personnel work, party committees must promote a sense of responsibility among competent offices and proactively, closely, carefully screen nominees to avoid “omitting” really talented, moral cadres.

Fifth, stepping up the building of pure, strong party organisations and comprehensively strong offices and units, enhancing emulation and propagation activities. This is not only a routine, important task of all offices and units, but also a meaningful action to welcome all-level party congresses. To that end, offices and units should strengthen their leadership and direction over the accomplishment of all targets set in the resolution of the 2020 - 2025 tenure and all regular and irregular tasks. Offices and units should continue to enhance Party building and rectification under resolutions, directives, and regulations by the Party and the CMC, particularly the resolutions and conclusions of the Party Central Committee’s 4^th Plenum (11^th, 12^th, and 13^th tenure), Conclusion 01-KL/TW of the Politburo on stepping up the study and following of Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, ethics, and lifestyle, the Campaign on “promoting tradition, devoting talent, deserving to be Uncle Ho’s soldiers in the new era”, the CMC’s Resolution 847-NQ/QUTW on promoting the virtues of Uncle Ho’s soldiers, resolutely combating individualism in the new situation as well as regulations on example-setting responsibility of cadres and party members, and things that party members must not do. Also, offices and units should well perform the tasks of training, combat readiness, regularity building, discipline management, and safety assurance, while intensifying emulation, propagation, cultural, artistic, and sport activities as a source of encouragement for cadres, party members, and the masses to bring into play patriotism, self-reliance, and the noble virtues of “Uncle Ho’s soldiers”, enabling them to obtain more achievements to welcome all-level party congresses towards the 14^th National Party Congress.

Maj. Gen. NGUYEN AN PHONG

Director of the Organisation Department