Political education is a basic form of ideological and cultural work and plays a particularly important role in the Party and political work at the units - fundamental stage that has decisive significance to building political steadfastness, consolidating stance and viewpoints, forming and developing qualities and personalities, and improving ethical qualities and the sense of observance of disciplines and laws for soldiers. Fully aware of that, in recent years, the Party Committee and High Command of Military Region 9 (MR9) have always implemented multiple guidelines and measures to lead and direct the improvement of the quality of this work to contribute to building a politically strong Military Region as a basis to improve the overall quality and combat power. The MR’s Party Committee and High Command have determined that this is the basic content and key work decisive to strengthening the ideological battlefield of the MR's Armed Forces.

Thoroughly grasping and strictly implementing the Ministry of Defense’s Project on “Renewing the political education work at the units in the new period”, the MR’s Party Committee has issued a specialized resolution on leading the renewal of the political education work and timely promulgated direction and guidance documents suitable to reality, ensuring uniformity in the awareness and actions of the MR’s Armed Forces. Party committees, political commissars, politicians, commanders, political agencies, and political officers at all levels have thoroughly grasped the position and importance of the implementation of the Project and promoted the responsibilities in leading, directing, and developing the implementation plans. The MR has required its units to clearly define the content, methods, roadmap, and implementation time and assign pilot units each content of the Project to draw experience and then implement simultaneously. In addition, the MR has also instructed its units to formulate plans and select contents in six forms of education according to Regulation No.916/QC-CT issued by the General Political Department to organize pilot fields to draw experience. In the course of implementation, the Party committees and commanders at all levels have regularly conducted the inspection, guidance, and preliminary and summary reviews to clarify the advantages, disadvantages, problems, and shortcomings to timely draw experience, ensuring the implementation in accordance with the prescribed time and schedule and achieving the set objectives and requirements.

One training session of the MR9's armed forces

The MR Party Committee and High Command have focused on leading and directing agencies and units to proactively renovate the programs, contents, forms, and methods of conducting the political education work. Based on the guidance of the MR’s Political Department, agencies and units have renovated the content of compiling documents, textbooks, and political education lesson plans for subjects that are rich in content and stick to the basic program of the General Political Department and the situation and tasks of the MR Armed Forces and attached basic education contents as prescribed to the education contents determined by the units themselves, ensuring the knowledge volume to meet the requirements of raising awareness and political stuff for cadres and soldiers. In that spirit, agencies and units have well organized the fostering to raise the level of knowledge in all aspects, pedagogical ability, and information technology skills for the cadres in charge of  political education; attached importance to on-the-spot fostering, the superior’s fostering of the subordinates, and fostering through contests, competitions, and commentaries; increased training, etc. In addition to the regular education content in accordance with the Regulation, the MR has focused on making legal education content a basic part of the political education program at the units for all subjects and strictly organize the Law Day with five contents, including thematic information, legal games, skits, legal consultation, and documentary films.

Its agencies and units have closely combined traditional teaching methods with the use of information technology media; knowledge transfer with practical experience exchange; and centralized education with self-study. At the same time, forms of education have been flexibly applied and diversified towards openness, suitability with the characteristics and tasks, and closeness to the psychology and cognitive level of cadres and soldiers. In particular, a number of forms have been focused on, such as: thematic research, news reports, political-ideological activities, newspapers reading, radio listening, propaganda on the internal radio system, forums, live dialogues, political and spiritual culture day, etc. Through activities of visiting, twinning, mass mobilization, origin marching, and organization of the implementation of emulation movements and major drives of the Party, the State, and the Army, especially the learning and following of Ho Chi Minh thoughts, ethics, and style to raise awareness, knowledge, and cultural lifestyles, build personality and determination will, and motivate cadres and soldiers to complete to all assigned tasks.

Along with that, the units have actively innovated to improve the quality of direct dialogues and exchanges with the soldiers to inform the situation and orient issues that may negatively affected the awareness and thoughts of the soldiers. At the same time, the legitimate mind and aspirations of cadres and soldiers have been listened to, received, and resolved to contribute to maintaining and strengthening solidarity, internal unity, preventing the manifestations of recession of thoughts, ethics, lifestyle, and raising awareness of observance of military disciplines and State’s laws. The education and management of thoughts have been conducted in the direction of combining basic education with continuing education, general education with private education according to subjects and circumstances and coordinated with local authorities, organizations and families to educate soldiers.

By doing so, for many years, the political education work at the units among the MR Armed Forces has been implemented synchronously, regularly and intensively. The political education thinking and methods have been basically reformed in a positive way at all levels; meanwhile, political cadres have become more confident and progressive in their capacity. Military staff and technical experts have been more responsible and actively participated in political education at the units. Through the renovation of the contents, forms, methods, an extensive and rich educational environment has been created to promote the active role of the soldiers in acquiring of knowledge and training and gradually improved the qualities and personalities of revolutionary soldiers, turning the education process into a self-education process. The results of the political awareness tests among cadres and soldiers have been always increased with 100% of satisfaction of requirements and 78% of good and excellence; the quality of training and combat readiness level and ability have been to constantly improved. Multiple units have achieved the title of “Good Training Unit”, namely: Division 330, Division 8, Information Brigade 29, and military commands of provinces of Soc Trang and Kien Giang, etc. The most important result of political education is that it has been directly contributed to raising awareness on the task situation and building up the determination will and confidence of cadres and soldiers among the MR’s Armed Forces in the Party, the State, and the regime. Especially, Facing the unexpected and difficult tasks, such as: combat readiness, search and rescue, repair of consequences of natural disasters, and drills of defense regions, security stabilization fighting, real firing, ... cadres and soldiers of the MR have always showed their political steadfastness and high sense of responsibility, and undeterrence of hardship and suffering to fulfill all assigned tasks.

The effectiveness of the political education work has contributed to improving the qualities, ethics, lifestyle, and personalities of the revolutionary soldiers and consolidating the confidence and absolute loyalty of cadres and soldiers of MR9 to the Party, Fatherland, and people. It is a solid foundation to build a strong military region in terms of politics and thoughts to serve as a basis for improving the overall quality and combat power and meeting the requirements and tasks of building the Army, consolidating the national defense, and defending the Fatherland in the new situation.

Major General Doan Thanh Xuan, Deputy Political Commissar of Military Region