APOLOGIES IN VIETNAM

VIETNAM’S COMMUNIST PARTY ADMITS MISTAKES AS DUNG KEEPS JOB

Bloomberg News

Bloomberg, October 16, 2012

Vietnam’s Communist Party apologized to the nation and decided against punishing one unnamed senior leader, leaving Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung in charge after rare online attacks. Stocks rose the most in a month.

“The Politburo and Secretariat for many terms now have made some big mistakes, especially having not prevented and remedied corruption and the deterioration among some party members,” General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong said yesterday on state radio and television. “Some senior officials, those currently in office as well as former ones, have occasionally not been morally good role models through their lifestyles and those of their families. They have significantly impacted the prestige of the party and the state.”

The 175-member Central Committee, which has the power to dismiss top leaders, spared the 14-member Politburo and the one member it said was deserving of punishment, Trong said. Stocks gained for the first time in four days after the announcement, which marked the end of a two-week meeting to assess the performance of the party and leaders including Dung.

Vietnam’s leaders are struggling to implement pledges to reduce the government’s role in the economy as bad debts at state-owned firms contributed to a credit rating downgrade. The outcome leaves Dung chastened and signals more turbulence ahead for the one-party state, according to Carlyle Thayer, professor of politics at the Australian Defense Force Academy in Canberra.

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