Blow for Vietnam PM in first ever confidence vote

HANOI - Vietnam's premier suffered a setback Tuesday after a third of lawmakers in the one-party state voted against him in a first ever confidence vote, seen as a bid to deflect growing public anger at the communist regime.
One hundred and sixty of some 500 lawmakers voiced "low confidence" in Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung's premiership, which has been tainted by a string of corruption scandals and worries over his handling of the ailing economy.
"Dung's results are a disaster," Vietnam expert Carl Thayer told AFP, adding that the premier "will be chastened by the result but will continue in office".
The breakdown highlights a lingering factional dispute, he said, with Dung's main rival President Truong Tan Sang ranked third in terms of "high confidence" votes while the premier was placed 25th.
"The confidence vote reveals that party in-fighting between factions is likely to continue," Thayer added.
Other top officials also scored poorly in the new annual vote with the central bank governor receiving "low confidence" votes from more than 40 per cent of lawmakers.
Lawmakers could express "low confidence", "confidence", or "high confidence" in the officials. Those with more than 50 per cent "low confidence" votes for two consecutive years could be asked to resign, state media said.
All 47 officials secured the 50 per cent support needed in Monday's ballot to avoid possible future disciplinary measures.
While the vote was broadly welcomed as a sign the regime is trying to respond to public dissatisfaction, the actual results were dismissed as largely meaningless by many local observers - who had warned that officials would close ranks behind the scenes to support each other regardless of performance.
"There is nothing surprising," political analyst Nguyen Quang A told AFP, describing the absence of a "no confidence" option on the ballot as "ridiculous".
Public anger at the government's handling of the economy, a lingering banking crisis and woefully inadequate public healthcare and education is reflected in the "low confidence" votes, he said.
But as receiving a higher number of "low confidence" votes will have no discernible impact on officials' careers, the exercise was "not a significant gesture", he said.
The Communist Party tightly controls public debate and routinely imprisons dissidents who question the authoritarian political system or call for change, but tech-savvy Vietnamese often use the Internet to express their dissatisfaction.
"If the public had been allowed to vote, the officials would have lost immediately," wrote popular blogger Nguyen Quang Lap in one widely shared posting.
The vote was hailed as "historic" by the official Vietnam News Agency, but prominent pro-democracy campaigners dismissed the exercise as a charade.
Dissident Pham Hong Son, who spent five years in jail for his activism and is currently on hunger strike to support another detained activist, said the process lacked credibility.
"This is just new validation for the authoritarian regime - a new cover for them. Ultimately, they are only doing this kind of thing to maintain the sole power of the Communist Party," he told AFP from his home in Hanoi.
Octogenarian activist Le Hien Duc agreed, saying the vote was "not objective because everything was decided in advance by the party".

Vietnam Prime Minister Warned in Confidence Vote

HANOI, Vietnam — Vietnamese lawmakers handed the prime minister a grudging mandate in the country's first ever confidence vote, a ballot seen as a small step toward a more pluralistic style of governance in the one-party, Communist nation. 

Premier Nguyen Tan Dung is under pressure because of his mishandling of the economy, previously one of Asia's best performing but now mired in massive levels of bad debt and a lackluster investment climate. Last year, he survived a leadership challenge at a meeting of top party leaders.

Dung and 46 other ministers and top state officials faced the vote by members of the national assembly, the first in what will be an annual process aimed at showing an increasingly assertive public that its leaders are more responsive to their demands. Voting in what was a secret ballot took place on Monday. Results were announced Tuesday.

Given more than 90 percent of the 498 members of the assembly are Communist Party cardholders, no one expected any of the officials to get the kind of poor showing that could trigger resignations.

Still, more than 30 percent gave Dung a "low confidence" vote, a clear sign of the divisions within the party over his second-term in office, due to end in 2016. Analysts said this showing by itself wouldn't impact his position, but could be used by rivals in internal negotiations over his future.

Assembly members got to vote on whether they had "high confidence," ''confidence" or "low confidence" in the officials. The rules of the secret ballot state that officials with more than a 60 percent "low confidence vote" might have to resign.

Dung received 160 "low confidence" votes out of 492 ballots, the third highest number of negative votes cast. President Truong Tan Sang, the man widely thought to be his main political challenger behind the tightly closed doors of party meetings, got just 28 negative votes.

The central bank governor received 209 "low confidence" marks, presumably a reflection of his handling of the economy. The education minister got 177. Aside from the economy, concern over the poor standard of schools and universities is a major public concern.

"This really does show that the assembly delegates are doing their job," said Edmund Malesky, a Vietnam expert at Duke University in the United States. "There definitely appears to some sort of responsiveness to constituencies. The two people associated with economic performance had a lower percentage of confidence votes than the mean."

National assembly deputy Duong Trung Quoc said the voting reflected "the reality of life and pressing issues and ... partly reflect the people's grievances."

The structural problems plaguing the economy and the increasing criticism and scrutiny of the party over the Internet have triggered calls for reforms by some in the party. While still arresting dissidents, it is revising the constitution, and will possibly water down language over the state's role in the economy.

Jonathan London, a Vietnam expert at Hong Kong's City University, said the ballot showed "Vietnam was charting its own course," albeit slowly. He asserted that a similar event wouldn't happen in China, Vietnam's much larger, Communist neighbor.

"Perhaps by necessity it is going for a brand of politics that has many of the trappings of a semi-accountable system," he said. "For a party that has a tradition of assuming its leaders were pristine and of outstanding caliber, it is a change of tune."

Why are Chinese tourists so rude? A few insights

They are seen as pushy, loud, impolite, unruly, and they are everywhere.
And although destination countries welcome the tourism dollars the Chinese spend, they loathe the chaos and hassle some mainland tourists bring upon their cities and other tourists.
“Why can’t they just behave?” people wonder, some aloud.
I have been asking myself the same question in the past months after reporting on the uncivilised, sometimes galling behaviour of some compatriots.
It seems that every time a “rude Chinese tourist" story is published on SCMP.com, it goes straight into the site's top 10 most read articles - one such article even managed to crawl back to the top months after it was posted. So I decided to give the question some serious thought.
I read up on the topic, talked to tourism experts and travel agents and chatted with some of these tourists who are now at the centre of public anger.
It soon dawned on me that the real question to ask is: “Why are the Chinese rude?”
Yong Chen, tourism researcher and post-doctoral fellow at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, said most “bad” tourists don’t intend to be “bad” or “tourists”, they are just being themselves - they are being Chinese.
Education makes a difference
Not every Chinese tourist is a rude one, and educated people are usually better behaved than those who have had a lower standard of education, said Chen.
This could be why middle-aged or older tourists who have been deprived of or received little education during China's politically tumultuous times tend to act more unruly. Many of them do not speak English, and some are not fluent Putonghua speakers. Their knowledge of the destination country and its culture is often at best outdated or non-existent.
This might explain the behaviour of a "rogue” mainland couple who recently visited Hong Kong with a group. They called the police and demanded HK$3,000 yuan in compensation after being made to wait two hours for their coach. The travel agency later said the coach had broken down and accused them of “blackmailing”.
Disregard for customs and rules
Jenny Wang, a Beijing-based Maldives travel agent, said uneducated tourists usually turn a blind eye to local rules and customs.
A Chinese man who was recently vacationing at a Maldives resort flipped out after discovering that the restaurant where he wanted to eat was fully booked, Wang said. He yelled threats and slurs at Chinese staff until one member was in tears.
“You cannot reason with these kinds of people,” Wang said. “They think they can do anything with their money.”
But one thing many Chinese vacationers don’t want to do with their money is tip - a custom in some places which many have ignored, Wang said.
Though most travel agents in China would educate their clients about tipping in a foreign country ahead of their trip, most people ended up tipping very little or none.
Some are not used to the idea of tipping, and they fail to understand that staff working at the Maldives resorts, who usually earn a meagre salary, rely heavily on tips, Wang said.
This has created increasing tensions between the Chinese and their hosts. Staff would naturally prefer serving guests from countries with a tipping culture. Other staff have gone after Chinese clients and asked openly for tips, a rare thing for them to do in the past.
Lawless for a reason
Students at Ewha University in Seoul, known for its beautiful campus, have recently complained about an influx of Chinese tourists, said the school.
Apparently taking photos on campus was not enough. Some camera-toting Chinese would also stride into libraries and take photos without the permission of students, according to media reports.
“As much as we want to keep the campus open to the local community,” said a university representative, “we’d like to prioritise our students’ right to study in a quiet and safe environment.”

Ewha resolved the crisis by putting up multi-language signs advising tourists to stay clear of study areas.
It seems that thousands of years after Confucius admonished his students not to “impose on others what you yourself don’t desire",  the Chinese now act in quite the opposite way.
Such people, both overseas and at home, selfishly skirted rules for a reason, said Chen.
Living in China, where the rule-of-law doesn’t exist, means everyone has to look out for their own interest. It also means people have little or no respect for laws.
This is bound to happen when ordinary folk are forced to watch their laws being violated every day by their leaders, Chen said, citing the Chinese idiom, shang xing xia xiao, meaning “people in lower class follow what their leaders in the upper class do”.
How long do we have to put up with bad tourists?
China and its people are paying a price for the bad behaviour of their tourists.
A poll by the Public Opinion Programme of the University of Hong Kong recently found that the number of Hongkongers holding negative feelings towards Beijing and mainland Chinese is up by about 40 per cent since November.
Following that survey, SCMP.com conducted another online poll on Wednesday, headlined  “What makes some Hongkongers dislike mainland China and its people?”
As of noon, more than 50 per cent readers blamed the negative feelings on “ill-behaved tourists”.
“The Chinese government and travel agencies should take the initiative to educate our tourists,” Chen said, urging co-operation from both authorities and private sectors. 
While many argue that historically American and Japanese tourists were also criticised for their bad behaviour when they became wealthy enough and traveled abroad for the first time, Chen said the Chinese should not use this as an excuse.
In fact, the Communist Party's Central Guidance Commission for Building Spiritual Civilisation and the China National Tourism Administration have recently issued a 128-character-long rhyme to remind tourists of behaving in a “civilised manner” on the road. The topic has also been a big hit on China's social media, where bloggers discuss and criticise the uncivlised behaviour of their compatriots.
But many are not optimistic that the situation will change any time soon.
“Chinese tourists have a long way to go before they will be respected by the world,” said Wang.

Eyes on Vietnam's Nguyen Tan Dung as top leaders face confidence vote

Vietnam's leaders faced their first confidence vote in the communist-controlled parliament yesterday, as the authoritarian regime seeks to defuse growing public anger over corruption and a lack of political accountability.
The vote - to be held annually - was approved by the one-party state's rubber-stamp legislature in November and requires most senior politicians, including the prime minister and president, to win support from lawmakers.

This does represent an effort … to shore up its faltering legitimacy

JONATHAN LONDON, ANALYST

The process has been hailed in the official press as part of a new commitment to transparency and accountability, but observers saw little threat to the communist hierarchy and expected the results to be decided in advance behind closed doors.
It will not be "a proper vote", said Nguyen Minh Thuyet, a former deputy who called for a confidence vote on Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung in 2010.
Even so, coupled with a recent government call for public consultation over proposed constitutional amendments, the vote indicates that the party is attempting to respond to rising public dissatisfaction, experts said. "This does represent an effort by the party and state to shore up its faltering legitimacy," said Professor Jonathan London at Hong Kong's City University.
While it is highly unlikely that the vote will result in any change, "even symbolically it is an important event, in Vietnam's evolution and in the evolution of the National Assembly," he added.
The results of the voting, which covers 47 top officials who yesterday submitted reports to lawmakers of their work performance, were expected to be announced today.
According to state media, officials who win support from less than half of lawmakers for two consecutive years may be forced to resign - but this is a "complicated", slow and effectively meaningless process, Thuyet said. "Everyone will win the vote," he said, describing widespread concerns that top officials would close ranks behind the scenes to support each other.
The most closely watched vote will be for Dung, who was handed a second five-year term by the party in 2011 despite his widespread unpopularity among the public. Dung has faced down repeated threats to his tenure, including rare public criticism from senior party figures and even an unprecedented call from one lawmaker to resign.
After months of internal political wrangling, it seems "the balance of power is clearly in favour of the prime minister", Nguyen Van Hieu, 76, a former top party member turned political commentator said. Dung is now "untouchable", he said.
Critics blame the 63-year-old's policies and governing style for Vietnam's economic malaise, endemic corruption and banking system riddled with toxic debt.

Vietnam PM takes a hit in first-ever confidence vote

(Reuters) - Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung was dealt a rare public blow on Tuesday, winning the full support of less than half of members of a parliament dominated by his ruling Communist Party in the country's first-ever confidence vote.
The former central bank governor got votes of "high confidence" from 210 members of the 498-seat national assembly, with 160 passing votes of "low confidence" in a rare show of public scrutiny of Vietnam's leaders.
The confidence vote follows a call from the president last year for greater accountability amid simmering public anger over mismanagement and corruption.
Although Dung passed the test, analysts said the lukewarm response from members of a party that traditionally rallies behind its leaders demonstrated discontent with the government's handling of entrenched graft and a once thriving economy stagnating under the weight of bad debt.
Dung, 63, received 122 votes of "confidence" in the ballot in which assembly members chose one of three ratings. Forty-seven officials faced votes and seven lawmakers did not cast ballots.
According to parliamentary law, any top officials receiving low confidence votes from two-thirds of the house must resign or face a second vote on their leadership.
Worse off than Dung was Soviet-educated central bank governor Nguyen Van Binh, who had 209 votes of low confidence and the full approval of just 88 assembly members.
"Their not-so-good result reflects the people's dissatisfaction with their management of the economy and banking system," said Nguyen Quang A, a well-known activist and economist, who suggested the confidence vote was designed to appease the public while not threatening the status quo.
Dung in February approved an economic masterplan aimed at reforming cash-hemorrhaging state-owned enterprise and tackling banks' high levels of toxic loans - factors blamed for squeezing credit growth and consumer spending, alarming foreign investors and causing more than 100,000 businesses to close.
Tuesday's confidence vote comes at a turbulent time for Vietnam's only party, which was rattled in January when former members and academics drafted and publicized their own constitution to coincide with a campaign to gauge public opinion on a charter widely criticized as undemocratic.
Lawmakers chose as their best performer President Truong Tan Sang, who won 330 high confidence votes and just 28 votes of low confidence, adding fuel to public speculation of a split within the secretive party, between factions aligned with either the president or the prime minister.
"We see clearly the difference in the result and the people can now draw a comparison between the prime minister and the president, the voting result and the actions of their leaders," said a lawmaker, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
(Reporting by Hanoi Newsroom; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Vietnam prime minister survives confidence vote but position weakened

Vietnam’s prime minister survived a non-confidence ballot in the national assembly on Tuesday, but with his position weakened after more than 30 per cent of its members voted against him.
Premier Nguyen Tan Dung and 48 other high officials faced the test, the first of what will be an annual exercise aimed at showing the country that its leaders are accountable.
Dung’s handling of the economy has put him under internal and public pressure. Last year he survived a leadership challenge. While the internal goings of the Communist Party are hard to read, many analysts said that Dung was under pressure from a clique close to President Truong Tan Sang.
Assembly members got to vote on whether they had “high confidence,” “confidence” or “low confidence” in the officials. The implications of the voting were vague, but some interpretations suggested officials with a 60 per cent “low confidence vote” might have to resign.
Vietnamese legislators cast votes of confidence for the first time on personnel during the National Assembly in Hanoi. Photo: Xinhua
Dung received 130 “low confidence” votes out of 498 ballots, the third highest number of negative votes cast.
The central bank governor received 209 “low confidence” marks, while the education minister got 177.
Sang got 28 “low confidence” votes.
Dung was handed a second five-year term by the party in 2011 despite his widespread unpopularity among the Vietnamese public.
Dung has faced down repeated threats to his premiership including rare public criticism from senior party figures and even an unprecedented call from one lawmaker to resign.
Critics blame the 63-year-old’s policies and governing style for Vietnam’s economic malaise, endemic corruption and banking system riddled with toxic debt, mostly held by state-run companies.
Top officials running state-owned companies frequently flaunt lifestyles incompatible with their official remuneration, fuelling public anger at corruption, inefficiency and waste in the sprawling sector.
But the Communist Party tightly controls public debate and routinely imprisons dissidents who question the political system or call for change.

Dung Passes Confidence Vote as Vietnam Economic Growth Slows (1)

Vietnam’s prime minister secured enough support from parliament during the communist country’s first confidence vote to keep his job, with almost a third of lawmakers rating him poorly as economic growth stagnates.

Nguyen Tan Dung had support from 67 percent of National Assembly members, the legislature announced in Hanoi today. Thirty-two percent of lawmakers gave him a “low-confidence” ranking. Central bank Governor Nguyen Van Binh received the worst report card, with a “low-confidence” vote from 42 percent of lawmakers.
The secret ballots on premier Dung, the country’s president and 45 other senior officials are a bid to boost government accountability. The ruling Communist Party faces pressure for not curtailing corruption as the economy grew at the slowest pace in 13 years in 2012. Earlier this year, a group including former government officials distributed an alternative draft constitution calling for “political competition.”
Yesterday’s confidence vote allowed Dung and Binh to be “chastised” for mismanaging the economy, while legislators avoided triggering a political crisis by leaving them in office, said Roberto Herrera-Lim, New York-based Asia Director at the Eurasia Group. Dung, 63, will probably complete his second term as prime minister, Herrera-Lim said. Dung was re-elected in 2011 for a five-year term.

‘Step Forward’

“They are sending a message,” Herrera-Lim said by phone. “In a system in which the party has dominated so long, to see some of its most powerful politicians being publicly held to account for the mismanaging of the economy is a step forward. If they did not deal with the problems of perceived mismanagement, it would not be socially acceptable to the population and that could ultimately erode their legitimacy.”
The benchmark VN Index dropped 0.5 percent at the close in Ho Chi Minh City. The gauge has surged 26 percent this year, at least 11 percentage points more than any other Southeast Asian benchmark gauge tracked by Bloomberg.
Under the system, a low confidence outcome from more than two-thirds of delegates will bring a no-confidence vote, with a majority required for the dismissal of an official. Officials who receive two consecutive “low confidence” ratings by more than half of lawmakers will face a no-confidence vote, which could lead to their dismissal from office.
Dung received “low-confidence” votes from 160 of the 492 National Assembly members who cast ballots, the third-worst performance among the 47 senior officials under scrutiny. Central bank chief Binh earned a total confidence vote of 57 percent, according to the results announced by the assembly.

Debt Burden

Vietnam targets 5.5 percent economic growth this year, which would be its first period of three straight years of growth below 6 percent since 1988, according to International Monetary Fund data. The government is trying to reform a banking sector burdened with bad debt, which the central bank estimated at 7.8 percent of outstanding loans at the end of last year, and force state-owned companies to become more efficient.
Jonathan London, assistant professor at the City University of Hong Kong’s Department of Asian and International Studies, said the vote results were similar to those that would be found in a “pluralistic political system.”
“It demonstrates that though Vietnam remains an authoritarian polity, its political system is evolving in an encouraging if indeterminate manner,” London said in an e-mail.

Vote Shortcomings

President Truong Tan Sang had a total confidence ranking of 93 percent, with 66 percent of lawmakers expressing “high-confidence” and 27 percent signaling “confidence” in Dung’s political rival. Of the 498 National Assembly members, 492 voted, according to the body’s chairman, Nguyen Sinh Hung, who told legislators that the calculations were based on 498 members. The total votes didn’t add up to 100 percent.
“We still have some shortcomings but as we can see the results have pretty well reflected the situation of the country,” Hung said. “The results showed that delegates have done it objectively.”
Dung faced a call for a confidence vote in the assembly in late 2010 for his handling of Vietnam Shipbuilding Industry Group, or Vinashin, the state-run firm that he championed and that almost collapsed under $4 billion of debt that year. The vote was never held and Dung apologized to the nation in a televised broadcast in October 2012.
Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong also apologized in October last year for “big mistakes” made by the Politburo. The following month, lawmaker Duong Trung Quoc suggested to Dung in a televised legislative session that he start a “culture of resignation.”
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: John Boudreau in Hanoi at jboudreau3@bloomberg.net