Fight against sectarianism and localism

As a human being, everyone has a private part, which is their family, clan, friends, and homeland. In their thoughts and feelings, everyone has a “private corner” for those close relationships. Raxun Gamzatop once said: “One can take a person out of their homeland, but one cannot take the homeland out of a person.”

The Vietnamese have a tradition of community solidarity to fight against natural disasters and invaders. From that, people have a strong sense of loyalty and affection for their homeland, family, and friends. When someone is successful, the whole community admires and is proud of them, and sometimes even relies on them. They believe that “a drop of blood is thicker than water”. The more difficult the community is, the more closely united it is, the more obvious this is.

If that were all, there would be no need to discuss further.

When these relationships and concepts develop in a distorted way, it is easy for people to only “see the trees but not the forest”, to only be stuck in a small space without seeing the big picture, the whole; to only see the immediate, individual things without seeing the common, long-term benefits,... and that is a bad habit - a “fertile ground” for individualism to develop.

Illustration: Internet

The most dangerous thing is when there are leaders of sectors, localities, and units who create “playgrounds – heroes of the moment”. They create cliques, the same hometown, the same family, the same interests, power is corrupted, exploited, creating group interests. There are cases where programs and projects are prioritized in the boss’s hometown; there are cases where the cadre organization is only the one who carries out the “rationalization process” under the boss’s direction; there are even phone calls from superiors “vetoing” an entire cadre planning for the entire term; it is not that there are no profit-sharing deals “do one thing, eat for life”,... Public opinion cannot help but be indignant when in many places there appear the situation of “one person becomes an official, the whole family benefits”, “our party committee”, “our village people’s council”,…

In some localities, agencies and units, from localism and factionalism, sensitive issues have emerged such as planning votes, confidence votes, evaluation votes, election votes, etc. in personnel work, elections in congresses or in conferences to vote on investment decisions for important projects. This is a "fertile ground" for individualism to develop and opportunism to prevail.

Resolution 4 of the Central Committee (12th tenure) has pointed out that localism and factionalism in personnel work is a very dangerous disease, one of the manifestations of moral and lifestyle degradation among cadres and party members, weakening the Party's leadership role and the nature of the state of the people, by the people and for the people. Therefore, identifying and resolutely fighting against and eliminating this dangerous "disease", purifying the cadres and party members, enhancing the fighting capacity, prestige and leadership role of the Party is an urgent issue today.

Since October 1947, in his work “Reforming the way of working”, President Ho Chi Minh has pointed out one of the diseases that a part of cadres and party members suffer from is “forming cliques”, from cliques to division. He affirmed that this disease is “very dangerous”, “very harmful to the Party”, because: “It harms unity... It destroys the intimacy and solidarity among comrades. It causes suspicion”.

Recently, General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong once said that among the signs of moral and lifestyle degradation of a number of cadres and party members, "The people and public opinion are most concerned and most concerned about the situation of corruption, factionalism, localism, and group interests among a number of party members with positions and power, including among a number of high-ranking officials of the Party and State."

Preventing, combating and combating factionalism and localism is one of the key, regular and urgent tasks to clean up the current public administration apparatus. To do so, it is necessary to promote the exemplary responsibility of cadres and party members in maintaining the unity and consensus of the Party. Self-criticism and criticism must be seriously implemented; attention must be paid to inspection and supervision work, especially inspection and supervision when there are signs of violations, making inspection and supervision truly a sharp sword and a solid shield to protect the Party and the regime, paying attention to building a truly clean and strong party committee and organization, maintaining and promoting the tradition of democracy and mutual love for comrades; respecting party members with different opinions but not harming the common goals and interests of the collective, community and country.

To foster a spirit of true solidarity, each cadre and party member - especially the leadership - needs to focus on selecting and educating to improve the political capacity, honesty, humility, and nobility of each cadre and party member, especially the leader. Must have a strong will, not allowing bad people to steer them into "wings" for unhealthy motives and purposes. Must be honest, demonstrate personal integrity and impartiality, and say "no" to wrongful acts of following and flattering. Must be humble to listen, learn, and absorb the good things of comrades, teammates, and people, avoiding narrow-minded attitudes when perceiving and evaluating. Must be noble to behave faithfully and humanely with brothers in the agency or unit, not letting the individual "ego" overwhelm the collective "we", leading to unnecessary cracks and cracks within the organization.

Every cadre and party member, especially key cadres, must know how to harmoniously resolve and properly handle the relationships between the public and the private, between society and family, between the collective and the individual; not to let sentimental and cronyistic thinking, concepts, and lifestyles dominate public affairs and public interests, affect discipline and the law, and erode the people's trust in the Party, the State, and the regime.