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Democracy in Vietnam: Changing Times or False Hopes Pamela McElwee, Visiting Fellow, Agrarian Studies, Yale University Vietnam
put in place a legal framework to expand and support direct citizen participation
in local governance in 1998 with a new policy on 'Grassroots Democracy'
(dan chu co so). This decree provided new mechanisms to enable citizens
to exercise their rights to be informed of government activities that
affect them, to discuss and contribute to the formulation of certain policies,
to participate in local development activities, and to supervise certain
government actions. In addition to the grassroots democracy decree, a
number of related legal documents have also been promulgated in the past
ten years to reform local governance, including an ambitious Public Administration
Reform program, a decentralized State Budget Law, a new Law on Complaints
and Petitions of citizens, and the first official ordinance on anti-corruption
measures. There have also been moves to reform elected bodies and electoral
systems, reform elements of the ruling Communist Party, and strengthen
the role of mass organizations. This talk will assesses these and other
new directions in local 'democracy' by discussing the roles and relationships
between citizen and state that are evolving in 21st century Vietnam. This
includes new mechanisms for "direct democracy", or the direct
participation of people in policy and management, particularly at local
levels, through meetings and other forms of interactions with state authorities,
as well as reforms in representative democracy, or governance through
elected representatives and deliberative bodies, primarily local village
leaders, People's Councils, and the National Assembly. |