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".