A New Manh

Political mysteries don't get much juicier than the one surrounding Nong Duc Manh, Vietnam's 61-year-old leader: Is the new Communist Party Secretary-General the love child of the country's founding father, Ho Chi Minh? That's been a long standing rumor, and Manh managed to duck the question through his 15-year rise through the ranks to the country's most powerful position. "We are all Uncle Ho's children," was Manh's clever, standard answer.

Yet in a rare interview granted to TIME, Manh took the question head-on for the first time. "It is not true," he said, sitting at Communist Party headquarters in Hanoi beneath a huge bronze bas relief of Ho. And that straight answer says a lot about Manh and what he wants to bring to his struggling land. For more than a decade, Vietnam has had the potential to break with its war-torn, poverty-ridden past and become Asia's newest tiger economy. Transparency, or the lack of it, has held Vietnam back. The country is ruled by a secretive group of former revolutionaries who have trouble understanding the notions of law and order so integral to germinating a market economy. Manh, though a dyed-in-the-wool apparatchik, could change that. Talking openly about himself�and denying a pretty glamorous lineage�is only part of Manh's new look for the party. Manh is on the record as wanting to change Vietnam from a diktat society to one governed by a legal code that applies equally to everyone. "I think everything should be governed by law," he told TIME.

Manh represents a new generation of leadership for Vietnam: his career was forged not in the jungles of war but in communist training schools. His parents, Manh says, were named Nong Van Lai and Hoang Thi Nhi, ethnic Tay farmers in the remote northern province of Bac Can, who both died when he was young. The orphaned Manh soon found a new family in the Communist Party, which he joined at 22. The war between the north and the U.S.-backed south was in full swing, but Manh was sent to school rather than to battle, studying Russian in Hanoi and then forestry in the Soviet Union. When victorious communist troops entered Saigon in 1975, Manh was attending an Elite party training school for future leaders in Bac Can. After first joining the National Assembly at age 49, he climbed the ladder quickly. It was an ascent aided, some say, by the talk that he was the offspring of Ho Chi Minh and a Tay servant. "I don't know why this rumor persisted for so long," Manh told TIME. Diplomats and local analysts say it persisted because he never convincingly denied it.

When he got the top job last April, he turned his attention to the economy, which was in need of help. While there were some positives�economic growth was 6.8% last year, a lot better than most countries, and there has been some improvement in exports and rising standards of living�Vietnam has had a hard time hatching a healthy private sector. With 1 million people joining the work force each year, economists say the country needs to hit at least 7% growth each year to keep from sliding back into poverty.

Too many of the foreign investors who rushed in during the early 90s, beguiled by the Communist Party's stated policy of doi moi, or "renovation," turned around and got right back on the plane after confronting Vietnam's murky system of permits and patronage, where corruption flourished and routine economic data were deemed state secrets. Foreign investment has been declining since 1997, and economists say the country's only hope is to get it back by pursuing real economic reforms. "We know we need to proceed with doi moi in a more dynamic and innovative way," Manh says.

To attract private businessmen to manufacture shoes or garments, the low wage industries that make sense for Vietnam, Manh must convince investors they will find a more business friendly system than ever before. A core issue is the nearly 6,000 state-operated enterprises and their estimated $1.3 billion in bad debts that drain money from the state budget and national banks. The logical step is to sell them to investors who can make them efficient, but there's no transparent system in place for putting a price tag on them. Not surprisingly, foreign investors have shied away.

Can Manh change a culture of opacity? Many think so�if he can convince the rest of his party to go along. In nine years, Manh helped transform the National Assembly from a rubber stamp into a reasonably representative legislature with televised sessions. "If he can do just half of what he accomplished in the National Assembly," says former U.S. Ambassador Douglas ("Pete") Peterson, "he can move Vietnam along the road of building a modern economy."

But even under Manh, transparency and liberalism can only be expected in the economic realm, not in politics. New York-based Human Rights Watch says 2001 was one of the worst years for human rights in a decade. In September, the government rounded up dozens of political and religious dissidents and put some under house arrest. Later that month, 14 ethnic-minority men accused of leading antigovernment protests in the Central Highlands were given prison sentences of up to 12 years. Analysts say Manh either ordered or allowed the crackdown to consolidate his power base and to appease party hard-liners. "Every Secretary-General has to concede that ground," says Vietnam expert Carlyle Thayer, a professor at the Australian Defense Force Academy. Asked whether he envisions allowing alternate political parties�which are now illegal�Manh told TIME that communist rule "is the burning desire and aspiration of all the people of Vietnam. We never think about any opposition parties."

Manh's dealmaking prowess is probably his most valuable asset. "He's had to learn the art of being a consensus broker," says Thayer. "This guy is thoroughly working within the system, and perhaps will be more effective as a reformer because of that." Ho Chi Minh himself was renowned for bringing squabbling factions of his revolution together. If Manh can do the same and steer the party toward reform, he may prove to be Ho's political heir, at least.

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