"If you are good at mass mobilization, everything will be successful"

(Baonghean) -Mass mobilization work is extremely important in the revolutionary cause of the nation. Since its inception and establishment of its revolutionary leadership position, our Party has always focused on mass mobilization work. However, in the process of implementing the current renovation process, somewhere some Party committees and authorities have not paid due attention to mass mobilization work, have not seen the "power of consensus", which has affected the effectiveness of the Party's leadership. The Resolution of the 7th Conference of the 11th Party Central Committee on "Strengthening and innovating the Party's leadership over mass mobilization work in the new situation" is an important orientation to promote propaganda, mobilization, and gathering of people, creating a revolutionary action movement of the entire people...

When people agree

In recent years, Cam Son commune has become a bright spot in Anh Son district in terms of the results achieved in transforming the structure of crops and livestock towards commodities. From land consolidation and plot exchange to models of growing squash, potatoes, tea and developing farm livestock, the commune's economy has developed strongly, and people's lives have gradually improved. The average income per capita in 2012 reached 20,600,000 VND/year, and that figure is expected to increase to 24,000,000 VND/person/year in 2015.

To achieve these encouraging results, in addition to the right orientation, the Commune Party Committee has focused on mass mobilization work, mobilizing the voluntary and active spirit of the masses. The policy of converting crops and livestock has been contributed by the people and discussed and agreed upon. The Commune Party Committee and People's Committee always work closely to take care of the transfer of technology, coordinate with businesses to consume products and regularly encourage households to invest in developing production and livestock.

The lesson of "skillful mass mobilization" that the commune applies includes the following steps: First, skillfully select tasks (choose practical tasks that are suitable for the people's strength and have a breakthrough nature to do); Second, skillfully organize (specifically assign tasks to cadres and party members from pioneering to technical guidance and product consumption); Third, skillfully propagate and mobilize (increase explanation and mobilization from specific models...) and fourth, skillfully summarize and conclude (each stage has an assessment of success, lessons learned and typical replication).

Thanks to "skillful mass mobilization" in mobilizing people's strength, in early 2013, Lam Bong village, Bong Khe commune (Con Cuong district) built a spacious community house and completed the construction of the concrete internal village traffic system. Comrade Luong Van Thang - Secretary of Lam Bong village said: “This project is worth over 200 million VND, of which the commune and district only supported 30 million VND, the rest was contributed by the villagers. Here, it is not simply that each person contributes 450,000 VND, but the bigger thing is the consensus, creating collective strength. During the implementation process, our mass mobilization team increased propaganda of policies, organized meetings with people to unify, assign and supervise the construction closely and publicly, transparently all contributions and costs. It is because of transparency, democracy and for the people that after the construction of the community house was completed, the people together contributed money, effort and poured concrete for the traffic roads in the whole village…”.

Lam Bong village community house (Bong Khe - Con Cuong).

Chau Binh Commune, a disadvantaged commune in the mountainous district of Quy Chau, was selected by the District Party Committee's Mass Mobilization Committee to build a grassroots mass mobilization model. All 13 villages in the commune have registered to build mass mobilization models. Typically, in Luong village, the village's women's association has registered to build a model of "5 no's, 3 clean's", including: no malnourished children, no school dropouts, no third child, no drug addicts, no policies not approved by the people, and clean houses, clean kitchens, and clean alleys.

After more than half a year of implementation, with the pioneering of the women in the women's association, the countryside scene in Luong village is always clean and neat; the people's lifestyle is much more civilized and progressive than before. Ms. Sam Thi Xuan - Secretary of the village Party cell shared: Women are the ones who directly take care of "kitchen matters" in each family. So when the women's association stood up to mobilize the implementation of "5 no, 3 clean", everyone supported enthusiastically, the general awareness of the whole community also increased accordingly. In the whole Luong village, for 15 consecutive years, no one had a third child."

Also in Chau Binh, we directly witnessed the effectiveness of the "smart mass mobilization" model in Xang 2 village. In 2005, Mr. Vi Van Thuyen (Xang 2 village) was arrested and sentenced to 7 years in prison for drug trafficking, leaving his wife and 4 children helpless and miserable at home. Realizing his mistake, Mr. Thuyen consciously reformed himself and was pardoned by the Party and State and released from prison 20 months early. Returning to his locality, the village's mass mobilization team proactively approached, encouraged, and shared with him and his family. Thanks to that, Mr. Thuyen quickly overcame his inferiority complex, integrated into the community, and developed the economy. Currently, his family is the owner of a brick casting facility, selling 15,000 bricks per month to the market inside and outside the district. As for the people in the hamlet and village, his family allowed them to buy on credit for up to 300 million VND. “When I first returned to my hometown from the camp, I felt very apprehensive, but thanks to the wholehearted care, visits and encouragement from the uncles and aunts in the mass mobilization team, I was able to overcome my inferiority complex. I am determined to do business to develop my family's economy, to make up for the long days of waiting in hardship for my wife and children, and to repay the trust and tolerance of the villagers for me,” Thuyen shared.

The models and methods of "skillful mass mobilization" from reality have affirmed that mass mobilization work is extremely important to the revolutionary cause. President Ho Chi Minh once emphasized: "Mass mobilization is to mobilize all the forces of each citizen, not leaving out any citizen, contributing to the entire people's force, to carry out the tasks assigned by the Government... We must find every way to explain to each citizen clearly: That work is beneficial to them and their duty, they must enthusiastically do it" (Uncle Ho's article on mass mobilization published in the Su That newspaper on October 15, 1949).

Uncle Ho's advice 64 years ago still has profound educational value, becoming lessons throughout the Party's leadership and direction, in every activity of the government and every specific action of cadres and Party members. That lesson has been applied and promoted effectively in many fields, in regions, creating positive values. The most obvious manifestation is that many communes, wards, towns; many villages, hamlets, and villages have promoted mass mobilization work in movements and specific tasks. According to statistics from the Provincial Party Committee's Mass Mobilization Committee, the whole province has 2,852 skillful mass mobilization models at the commune level; 3,312 skillful mass mobilization models at the hamlet, hamlet, and village levels, contributing positively to socio-economic development, ensuring national defense and security, building new rural areas, building new lives in residential areas, etc.

Innovation, improving the effectiveness of mass mobilization work

The Resolution of the 7th Conference of the 11th Party Central Committee on “Strengthening and innovating the Party’s leadership over mass mobilization work in the new situation” clearly stated: “Mass mobilization work still has many limitations and weaknesses. The development and implementation of the Party’s resolutions and directives on mass mobilization work are not timely and ineffective; there is no accurate assessment and forecast of developments and changes in social structure, population composition, thoughts and aspirations of people of all walks of life... to have appropriate policies and strategies. The institutionalization of the Party’s policies and viewpoints on mass mobilization work is not timely, especially the mechanism of “Party leadership, State management, people as masters”. The causes of these shortcomings and weaknesses include both objective and subjective factors, but most importantly, each Party Committee, government and organization needs to recognize and self-examine to have policies to innovate mass mobilization work in the most appropriate way to the reality of each locality.

Through practical research, it is found that in some localities, the Party Committee has not fully recognized the importance of mass mobilization work, so it has not selected the right cadres. Some districts and communes even consider the mass mobilization committee and mass mobilization block as the place to arrange "problematic" cadres, who have been involved in weaknesses and mistakes in other positions before. Besides, although the mass mobilization block from district to commune is gathered from the front, unions and social organizations, the implementation is not systematic, and the cadres do not have enough knowledge and experience to mobilize and convince the masses. That is not to mention the exemplary role of cadres doing mass mobilization work in the "blood" relationship with the people in the village.

Mr. Vi Van Thuyen opened a workshop to produce dashboard tiles for high income.

Mass mobilization work, in essence, is propaganda, mobilization, and gathering consensus and cooperation of the people. To do this work well, it is necessary to strengthen the promotion of grassroots democracy; increase meetings, exchanges, and discussions with the people and be transparent and public about what needs to be done as well as the rights that the people enjoy. The shortcomings of mass mobilization work for a long time have mainly focused on the field of site clearance and resolving issues of mechanisms and policies related to the rights of the people. Almost every locality is "stuck" in this field.

Remember, two years ago, Tan Ky district upgraded and expanded the road to the center of Phu Son commune; the road section is only nearly 20km long, when completed, it will facilitate people to grow sugarcane as raw material for Song Con Sugar Factory, while creating conditions for poor mountainous people here to travel and circulate better, improving the quality of life. However, because the District Land Clearance Board did not publicly and transparently decide on the compensation price for land and property acquisition, creating confusion and affecting the rights of the people, some households protested, until the district government resolved "reasonably", the new road was constructed (almost a year behind schedule). The shortcomings in the mass mobilization work have caused many obstacles in land clearance and construction of projects such as closing Hung Dong landfill and moving to a new landfill in Nghi Yen; expanding and upgrading National Highway 1A, Vinh - Cua Lo Boulevard, etc.

Analysis of the shortcomings in site clearance and land acquisition shows that in the process of implementing socio-economic development programs and projects, mass mobilization work has not been focused on from the beginning, but only when difficulties arise is mass mobilization "mobilized". Also because they are not involved from the beginning, cadres doing mass mobilization work do not fully grasp the information or are not fully provided with programs and projects, so the effectiveness of mass mobilization work is not high, leading to prolonged problems and conflicts.

To overcome that situation, when implementing Resolution 7 of the Central Committee (11th tenure) on mass mobilization work, our province directed the implementation of the project "mass mobilization work, grassroots democracy regulations in planning, building and implementing investment projects for economic and social development, compensation for site clearance, and land acquisition for resettlement". The Provincial Party Committee's Mass Mobilization Committee has advised on building an action program with 10 contents to strengthen and innovate mass mobilization work suitable for each residential area, contributing positively to the socio-economic development of the province.

Closed concrete roads in Cam Son commune (Anh Son).

Innovation in the Party's leadership method in mass mobilization work requires starting from the grassroots, closely following the rapid development of reality. More than anyone else, the Party cell committees, mass mobilization teams, and mass mobilization blocs from each village, commune, and ward must best understand the grassroots situation and the thoughts and feelings of the masses in each residential area. From reality, the cadres doing mass mobilization work need to have methods of mobilizing and gathering the masses suitable for each target group.

In the current period, all localities are implementing the goal of building new rural areas, many places have known how to arouse people's awareness, and have done many meaningful projects. That is to mobilize the combined strength of the people in building rural traffic, improving fields, developing the economy, increasing income, and building cultural institutions. Each completed project demonstrates the solidarity and determination of the Party Committee, government and people.

Thereby, the grassroots political system needs to continue to coordinate well in implementing mass mobilization work, promoting people's democracy in the direction of "Anything must be discussed with the people, asking for their opinions and experiences, together with the people making practical plans for local circumstances, then mobilizing and organizing the entire population to implement". Knowing how to promote democracy with the motto "People know, people discuss, people do, people inspect" will contribute significantly to mobilizing people's contributions to serve the common work of the community and ultimately the people will enjoy the results.

Discussing the action program of the mass mobilization system, comrade Nguyen Manh Khoi - Deputy Head of the Provincial Party Committee's Mass Mobilization Commission said: "At the same time as thoroughly grasping the Resolution of the 7th Central Party Committee Conference on "Strengthening and innovating the Party's leadership over mass mobilization work in the new situation", the Provincial Party Committee's Mass Mobilization Commission organizes inspections and reviews of all mass mobilization activities from district to commune and hamlet, thereby making reasonable enhancements and innovations. On that basis, research, apply and promote models of "Skilled Mass Mobilization", encourage typical factors of good people, good deeds, promote patriotic emulation movements, create a large and effective movement from the grassroots... The Provincial Party Committee's Mass Mobilization Commission will strengthen coordination with Party committees, the Provincial Office, the Fatherland Front and mass organizations to monitor and urge implementation in the most effective way...".

Through revolutionary periods, our Party has always affirmed the important and decisive role of the people and the effective promotion of mass mobilization work as a fundamental factor to gather the strength of the masses. From ancient times to the present, the work of "leniency and relaxation for the people, taking a deep-rooted and lasting plan" (Tran Hung Dao) is "the core of humanity is to pacify the people" (Nguyen Trai). Therefore, President Ho Chi Minh always reminded that "all successes and failures depend on the people" and "If mass mobilization is poor, everything will be poor. If mass mobilization is skillful, everything will be successful". Recalling the teachings of our ancestors like this does not mean to call for dogma but to help each of us clearly see our responsibility and constantly innovate mass mobilization work to mobilize people's strength to create victories in the cause of national renewal and development.

Article and photos: NGUYEN SON - THANH DUY