"The 'disease' of drinking alcohol"
(Baonghean) - Reading the Nghe An newspaper on April 12, 2013, the article "When the official is drunk" by author Kinh Can, tells the story of a district chairman on the outskirts of Vinh City who drank heavily from noon until late afternoon, unable to work or receive guests. In the afternoon, after the journalist called two or three times, he finally opened the door, saying that the journalist should go to the local area because he couldn't say anything at that moment due to the lingering effects of the drinks he had consumed earlier that day.
Articles about drunkenness leading to job dismissals are not new, but the most recent and insightful one is a publication in the party newspaper, about a district chairman who got drunk. There's no need to reiterate the numerous directives from the Party Central Committee and the Prime Minister prohibiting civil servants from drinking alcohol during working hours; these have been widely disseminated. We need to understand the root cause of this drinking problem to find an effective remedy. The main reason for civil servants, especially those in leadership positions and heads of departments, isn't alcoholism or the ability to drink excessively, but rather a peculiar habit of competing to get each other drunk. They believe that drinking together to the fullest is the only way to truly live and work together, while refusing a toast for any reason shows a lack of sincerity and respect. This is where the intense pressure to force oneself to drink comes from.
I don't know where this mixed culture came from, but people can't drink quietly at their own tables; they get up and move around, switching tables dozens of times after meetings or celebratory parties. Even young civil servants find a table for their superiors, pressing their left hand to their chest and holding a glass in their right, toasting each of their superiors as a matter of courtesy. The custom of drinking is 100% supervised, and after drinking, they still have to shake hands to finish. They're already afraid of alcohol, and now they're afraid of this unhygienic handshake.
In a rice-growing district, the district chief once plied everyone at every table with alcohol, even the women, shocking them, and even the priests. Everyone respected and feared him, not daring to refuse because he said: "If you're afraid of a glass of wine, how can you govern? If you refuse a glass of wine offered, is your heart sincere?" There was even a case where a teacher was plied with alcohol until he was drunk at lunchtime, and the school had to temporarily detain him in the storage room that afternoon to ensure the council meeting wouldn't be disrupted.
During his lifetime, the poet Tran Huu Thung said that drinking alcohol is good, but there is also "magical wine" ("Three Cups of Wine") and "pig wine," which, after drinking, leaves one lying on the ground for hours or turning into a scoundrel. Why can't those in high positions at the district or agency level overcome such a simple thing to maintain their integrity and set an example for their subordinates? I believe that if civil servants refuse to comply with the government's ban, it will be difficult to talk about the credibility of officials, the credibility of the Party, or about studying and following President Ho Chi Minh's moral example. I think that before even discussing the ban on alcohol, we must severely discipline the "disease" of excessive drinking, especially among civil servants and officials, particularly those in leadership positions.
Hoang Nguyen (Yen Thanh)
