Selecting personnel for the XIII term: Evaluation of cadres must be extremely fair.

The work of preparing personnel for the Party Committee for the 2020-2025 term must focus on introducing new factors with virtue, talent, prestige and prospects. This is one of the requirements set forth by the Politburo in Directive 35, recently signed and issued by General Secretary and President Nguyen Phu Trong, to guide Party Committees at all levels in preparing for Party Congresses at all levels towards the 13th National Party Congress.

Evaluating cadres is difficult but not impossible if organizations and individuals perform this task objectively, honestly and impartially.

Before each congress, the issue of personnel is always of public concern. The requirement is to select people with all the qualities, in which talent and virtue, even morality, must be placed first.

Choosing the wrong staff will harm the whole system.

Assessing the necessary and sufficient conditions of cadres is a difficult task but does not mean it cannot be done. Therefore, according to Mr. Nguyen Trong Phuc, former Director of the Institute of Party History, in the entire process of selecting cadres (assessment, planning, training, placement, rotation), the assessment stage is identified as the key and decisive stage. Because only with correct assessment can we select good cadres. Choosing the wrong cadre will lead to the wrong arrangement of the right person, the right job, causing harm to the entire Party organization and the entire political system.

The former Director of the Institute of Party History also emphasized that the selection of cadres plays an important role, even decisive, so the cadre evaluation stage requires the evaluator, specifically the leader and the Standing Committee, to be extremely objective, honest, impartial, without the slightest bias, and cannot "love them to be good, hate them to be bad". The responsibility of the Party Committee and the leader is to see all the strengths and weaknesses of each cadre before including them in the planning. If they are not brave and impartial, those who do the "scoring" task can easily be influenced by personal goals, interests, and group interests.

The story of the disciplinary action against Mr. Trinh Xuan Thanh nearly 3 years ago is still relevant. Public opinion at that time expressed the view that the entire process must be reviewed to avoid selecting the wrong person. But in reality, many opinions said that the process was not at fault, but the fault lay in the input of the process, which sometimes was not up to standard.

The process has no errors but still chooses the wrong person

Mr. Le Nhu Tien - former Deputy Chairman of the National Assembly's Committee for Culture, Education, Youth, Adolescents and Children. Photo: Binh Minh

Mr. Le Nhu Tien - former Vice Chairman of the National Assembly's Committee for Culture, Education, Youth, Adolescents and Children, in an interview with VOV.VN reporter, used the image of the process of making ham to talk about the process of selecting and appointing officials. He said that if people put spoiled meat into making ham, they also follow the correct process of grinding, pounding, cooking... but the quality of the ham will certainly not be as good as the ham made from fresh meat, not to mention that the ham will spoil quickly.

In the process of selecting cadres, even if the process is followed correctly, the process cannot determine the output quality if the input quality is not taken seriously. A person who does not have both qualities and abilities will still be an unqualified and incompetent cadre after going through the process. Mr. Tien believes that we should not only look at the process, but also pay special attention to selecting people to nurture and train to become cadres.

Mr. Nguyen Trong Phuc - former Director of the Institute of Party History. Photo: Binh Minh

Sharing the same view, the former Director of the Institute of Party History said that the process was not at fault but still chose the wrong officials. The reason was that the process was influenced by factions and interest groups.

Therefore, the agencies and individuals responsible for evaluation must truly attach importance to the goals, ensuring political tasks and work, not for personal interests, not allowing the pursuit of positions and power to dominate. This cadre is assigned to a suitable job, to best promote his/her capacity and strengths, which must be correctly assessed. It is impossible to "give birth" to work and organizations for the sake of people.

Avoid running votes in staff evaluation

Another point that needs to be especially emphasized in evaluating cadres, according to Mr. Nguyen Trong Phuc, is collective responsibility. Evaluating a cadre, especially evaluating to put a cadre into leadership planning, is the collective responsibility of the Party committee and organization, not just of an individual, although the responsibility of the leader is also very large. That collective must also be extremely objective, honest, and impartial to avoid vote-buying in the evaluation. In the name of the collective, each individual in that collective must firmly grasp the principles of cadre evaluation. Only then will the evaluation of cadres be truly correct, and only then can the right cadre be selected.

In the article, which serves as a guideline for Party committees at all levels after Directive 35 was issued, General Secretary and President Nguyen Phu Trong especially emphasized that personnel work must be carried out step by step, task by task, firmly, carefully, strictly, following the correct procedures, ensuring democracy, objectivity, openness, transparency, but must be truly the right person, right job. It is necessary to strengthen control over personnel work and personnel preparation at Party committees; strictly prohibit all manifestations of violating the principle of democratic centralism, seeking to promote one person, demote another, causing suspicion, and causing internal disunity.