Land owned by the people
(Baonghean) -Institutionalizing the Party's land policies and guidelines, the 1992 Constitution stipulated: Land belongs to the entire people (Article 17), the State unifies land management according to planning and law (Article 18) and despite many limitations, the 2003 Land Law, together with documents guiding the implementation of the law, has created a fairly complete system of legal documents, contributing significantly to promoting economic and social development.
The Land Laws promulgated in 1993, 1998, and 2001 specified five rights: conversion, transfer, lease, inheritance, and mortgage of land use rights. By the 2003 Land Law, they had developed into common rights of land users and nine rights including: conversion, transfer, lease, sublease, inheritance, donation, land use rights, mortgage, guarantee, and capital assistance with land use rights.
The 2003 Land Law has specified the issue of public ownership as the right to possession and the right to disposition; regarding the right to disposition, the State only determines land use planning and land use purposes, the remaining land users have all rights to land including transfer, lease, mortgage, inheritance, capital contribution, donation... thus, public ownership of land is not an abstract general concept, but has expanded the rights of land users. Because in reality, for example, with residential land, the person who is currently allocated land has most of the rights of a land owner, in essence before the law, land use rights have become property rights (or limited property rights), transactions on land use rights have become property transactions and the person entitled to use land is essentially the owner of those properties...
The current hot issue is land recovery, compensation, and site clearance. Many cases of inadequate recovery and compensation for land users have led to long-lasting, difficult-to-resolve lawsuits, and some places are abusing land recovery, causing negative and corrupt land practices. However, it must be firmly affirmed that public ownership of land has nothing to do with negative and corrupt practices in land recovery. The 2003 Land Law clearly stipulates the cases in which land recovery is allowed, but when implementing the law, many places naturally expand this right. Therefore, the issue that needs to be amended in the draft Law is the land recovery mechanism (principles, procedures, order, compensation prices when recovering land from users...).
The people's ownership of land is not the cause of the increase in complaints, but mainly due to the law enforcement, management and administration of land. People who protest and make complaints never say that they want to immediately abolish the people's ownership regime, and they only raise specific issues arising from the law enforcement stage related to land use rights stipulated in the law. The Draft Land Law 2003 has stipulated that land use rights are property rights, which is very beneficial to the people and this right is fully protected by law.
It is thought that continuing to affirm that land is owned by the entire people is an important issue, especially in the Land Law and the State, on behalf of the people, exercises the right to manage as the representative owner, that is, the State holds the total assets and land resources to organize land use according to its authority. The State stipulates that part of the right to possession is assigned to users on specific land plots and plots for a limited time but not permanently; the State exercises the right to own land economically by exploiting the utility, enjoying the benefits and profits from assets and land resources, but the State does not directly use the entire land itself but organizes the entire society to use the land and the right to use land is assigned to land users on specific plots of land; the State's right to decide is fundamental and absolute, demonstrated through specific activities when allocating land, leasing land, recovering land, granting land use right certificates...
Minh Thien (Nghe An Military Command)
