HANOI: Vietnam's ruling communists gather this week for a key party meeting to choose their leaders as unusual economic burdens threaten dreams of modernization, and political change occurs at glacial speed. The one-party state is striving to build a “modern industrialized country” by 2020 but faces immediate challenges that include high inflation, currency weakness, systemic corruption and a bloated state sector. “Any new leadership coming in will have no choice but to push greater economic reform,” an Asian diplomat said, noting the emerging threat of competition from neighbours such as Indonesia and the Philippines. A socio-economic strategy for the next decade – to be debated at the secretive five-yearly Congress scheduled to run from Wednesday until Jan.19 – pledges to carry out reforms long sought by foreign investors. These include the need for a more skilled workforce, better infrastructure, and more efficient state enterprises. Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has publicly voiced support for such measures. He is seen as having a good chance of being chosen for a second term as the country's most powerful figure when 1,400 party members gather to elect the Politburo which includes top leaders. But critics doubt the will of delegates to radically alter course in a country where everything from trade unions to youth groups and the press are linked to the party. “We don't see any significant change,” said Nguyen Quang A, who ran a think-tank until he and other researchers shut it down in 2009 in protest at government attempts to control them. The state economic sector still plays too much of a role 25 years after the “doi moi” reform policy began to open the economy, he said. A communist source – reflecting a diversity of opinion within the party – said the biggest weakness of the Congress is that it will not make the system more accountable to the country's 86 million people. “These people who have been fighting so long, sacrificed so much... they deserve a democratic right,” said the source, alluding to his country's wars against French colonialists and the United States. – Agence France
