By: David Brown
General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trọng is not a quitter. For 10-plus years, he has labored to cleanse the Communist Party of Vietnam of corruption and doctrinal flabbiness. Last June, Trọng deployed some impressive statistics: nearly 17,000 cases of corruption or abuse of position had been prosecuted, 175,000 CPV members disciplined or punished. Privately, however, Trọng could only conclude that the more that errant officials have been jailed, the more things have stayed the same. It is a structural thing: from top to bottom, Vietnam’s economy depends on grease to function. Petty corruption is endemic too, but the cop who accepts your đồng-stuffed envelope instead of ticketing your minor infraction is not the bad guy here. He’s merely emulating his superiors. Big corruption is typically less obvious: someone who wants title to a choice piece of property or a nice contract to supply goods or services to a state enterprise connects discreetly with an upper-level official who can make that possible. Necessarily, these deals are made in dark corners out of public view. The Covid-19-connected scandals that erupted in Vietnam late in 2021 were by contrast blatant. They directly touched much of the middle class. The national mood was ugly. The malefactors are being punished… The text above is just an excerpt from this subscriber-only story.To read the whole thing and get full access to Asia Sentinel's reporting and archives, subscribe now for US$10/month or US$100/year.This article is among the stories we choose to make widely available.If you wish to get the full Asia Sentinel experience and access more exclusive content, please do subscribe to us for US$10/month or US$100/year.
Read Asia Sentinel in the app Listen to posts, join subscriber chats, and never miss an update from Asia Sentinel.
|
