Should "legislate" Clause 2, Article 4 of the Constitution?

(Baonghean) - The Party's policy is to build our State into a state of law, all individuals and organizations must strictly comply with the Constitution and the law, including Party members and organizations, including the Party Central Committee, the Politburo, and the Secretariat. The Party also advocates that power must be controlled, so legalizing the Party's leadership is also to effectively concretize the supervision and control of power stated in Clause 2, Article 4. The content of Clause 2, Article 4 in the draft amendment to the Constitution states: "The Party is closely attached to the people, serves the people, is subject to the people's supervision, and is responsible to the people for its decisions."

At the conference to collect opinions on the draft amendment to the Constitution of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, Mr. Le Quang Vinh - former Deputy General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Fatherland Front said: "In reality, as Resolution 4 of the Central Committee mentioned, there is still a power vacuum in the Party, which has not been promptly supervised, so it is easy to abuse power. This draft amendment has added Clause 2 (Article 4) which is necessary, but still not enough because the monitoring mechanism is not clear. It is necessary to create a legal framework, which is to build a law on the Party. In the current apparatus, there are a number of inspection and monitoring agencies. However, at the highest level of the Party agency, there is still a power vacuum that has not been monitored. Those with positions and power can take advantage of that loophole to work for personal purposes, group interests, and overshadow the common interest. Therefore, many opinions have proposed that there must be a law on the leadership of the Party. If we just say that the Party is under the general supervision of the people without a law, it is just a mouthpiece. "It is an order, it is an order!" Mr. Le Truyen, former Vice President of the Central Committee of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, affirmed: "In the process of building a rule-of-law state, no organization or individual can stand outside the law. The development of the law on the Party also aims to affirm the leadership role of the Party, ensuring the basis for that leadership associated with the law, with the supervision of the people. This is the appropriate and ripe time to draft and promulgate the law on the Party."

The issue of building a law on the Party is not a new issue! According to Mr. Nguyen Tuc, member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, from the time when comrade Le Quang Dao was Secretary of the Party Central Committee, Chairman of the National Assembly as well as when he became Chairman of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, he persistently proposed building this law. In 1993, when drafting Resolution 07 of the Politburo, the issue of the law on the Party was also raised in the Politburo, but since then, for many reasons, the law has not been issued. Mr. Tuc believes that without a law on the Party, the phenomenon of degeneration and corruption within the Party cannot be pushed back. This is an issue that has been raised since the 6th Congress (1986), now is the time to be determined to implement it!

Thach Quy (Vinh City)