Secretary General of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) and State President Nguyen Phu Trong delivered a speech at the opening session of the CPV’s 13th Congress on January 26.
| Secretary General of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) and State President Nguyen Phu Trong at the opening session on January 26. Photo: VGP |
The speech comprises two main parts, including one focusing on lessons learned from the previous congress in 2016-20 and key points for the upcoming term.
Hanoitimes has the honor to introduce his speech in brief.
LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE 12TH CONGRESS AND REVIEW BACK ON DOI MOI JOURNEY
The President named five valuable lessons of experience.
From the reality of the Doi moi (Renewal) process, especially the experience learned from the implementation of 12th Party Congress’ resolution during the last five years, General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong pointed out five valuable lessons as below:
Firstly, the Party building and rectification must be drastically, comprehensively, synchronously carried out on a regular basis and effectively deployed in terms of politics, ideology, morality, organization and personnel.
It’s a must to build up a clean, strong, comprehensive State and political system; creating a perfect mechanism of strict control of power; fighting against the moral degradation; preventing “self-evolution” and “
Party’s personnel must be the most important task, focusing on building a contingent of cadres, especially strategic-level cadres, of high qualification who are competent and reputable leaders.
Secondly, people should be considered the “root” in all affairs of the Party and State. It is necessary to trust, respect, and promote the people’s right to mastery, and persistently follow the motto of “People know, People discuss, People do, People inspect, People supervise and People benefit.”
People are always placed at the center position, and the subject of the renovation, construction and defense of the country; all policies must come from the real life, aspirations, rights and interests of the people, taking the happiness and well-being of the people as the target to strive for.
In addition, the Party needs to tighten ties with the people, relying on them to build up the Party, while consolidating and enhancing the people’s trust in the Party, the State, and socialism.
Thirdly, in its leadership, instruction, management and implementation, the Party must have strong determination; exert great efforts; take drastic action; be dynamic, creative, and active; take the appropriate steps to promote all resources and driving force as well as superiority of socialism; promptly remove bottlenecks and problems; uphold the responsibilities of the heads associated with promoting the synchronous strength of the entire political system; promote democracy together with maintaining discipline; and well perform coordination in leadership, management and administration to create breakthroughs for development.
Fourthly, the Party’s priority should be given to synchronously building development institutions, ensuring harmony between being unwavering and innovative, between inheritance and development, between economic renovation and political and socio-cultural renovation, between the compliance of market regulations and the assurance of socialist orientations, between economic growth and cultural and human development, between the settlement of social issues and the protection of natural resources and the environment, between socio-economic development and ensuring defense-security, and between independence, self-reliance and international integration. The Party also needs to pay special attention on promoting the key role of human, culture, education and training, and science and technology as drivers for national development.
Fifthly, the Party needs to proactively study and accurately forecast the situation to avoid passivity and surprise; consistently safeguard independence, sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity in parallel with maintaining a peaceful, secure and stable environment for national development; and actively step up international integration intensively and extensively on the basis of maintaining independence, self-determination and self-reliance.
It's also important to properly and effectively handle relationships with major powers and neighboring countries; effectively bring into play the country's combined strength in combination with the power of the times; efficiently exploit all resources to meet the requirements of the nation’s construction, development and protection in the new situation.
“These five experienced lessons are important foundations for the Party to continue making use of and promoting creativeness in leadership and instructions to help the country remain firm and resolute to overcome new difficulties and challenges as well as heavier tasks in the 13th tenure,” he confirmed.
| Representatives at the opening session. Photo: Vietnam News Agency |
KEY MISSIONS FOR THE 13TH CONGRESS AND YEARS TO COME
For the orientation and objectives of the 13th Party Congress and subsequent years, Mr. Trong said the growing global uncertainties, climate change, natural disasters and non-traditional risks, especially cyber security, are posing major challenges to Vietnam’s stability and sustainable development.
“Amid difficulties, Vietnam has attained major results, but still faces with numerous difficulties, risks and shortcomings,” said the Party Chief.
He noted Vietnam’s economic growth has not been as expected, and the GDP growth suffered a sharp decline in 2020 as a result of the pandemic and natural disasters.
Among issues of the economy, the top leader emphasized the necessity to improve the economy’s resilience and independence, and urged greater efficiency in the operation of state-owned enterprises.
The State President also called for a focus on sustainable growth from the private and foreign-invested sectors.
Meanwhile, there are urgent needs to ensure social security and public order, while inefficiency in environmental protection and utilization of natural resources are causing public discontent.
Mr. Trong expressed concern at the low quality of certain laws and regulations, along with the limited capacity from government agencies in law enforcement processes.
“Such issues and shortcomings require stronger efforts and determination to deal with,” Mr. Trong stressed, warning of complacency and the lack of vigilance.
In order to push up further reform in the next period, Mr. Trong emphasized the importance of understanding five guiding viewpoints.
The Party leader said Vietnam will continue to stand firm on and apply Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh’s thought in a creative way. As such, the country remains steadfast in pursuing independence and socialism, defending the national interests based on international laws.
“This is the key principle and matters most to our regime, while laying a solid foundation for the Party,” stated the president.
In Vietnam’s overall development strategy, Mr. Trong said the priority is to step up comprehensive renovation towards rapid and sustainable development.
“In this process, no effort would be spared to promote socio-economic-cultural development, Party building, and ensure national defense-security.”
He expected Vietnam to accelerate the application of technology, science, and innovation from the Fourth Industrial Revolution to aid the development process.
“A strong Communist Party of Vietnam with the support of the people is capable of overcoming any challenge and difficulty and creating new miracles in the process of country building and developing,” stressed Mr. Trong.
In the 2021-25 tenure and subsequent years, the overall development goals will enhance the leadership capabilities and the fighting spirit of the Party; keep a strong and pure political organizations; build public trust toward the Party, the government and socialism; and inspire people to join hands in realizing the goal of a prosperous Vietnam.
Mr. Trong pointed out specific milestones for Vietnam, in which Vietnam will become a middle-income country with a certain level of modernization and industrialization by 2025. Five years later, in 2030, Vietnam is set to be an upper middle-income country, and by 2045 to become a developed and high-income country.
Key breakthroughs are required, Mr. Trong said, including the finalization of legal framework for development, with the foremost being the legal environment to promote the socialist-oriented market economy; develop high-skilled workforce and socio-economic infrastructure, focusing on priority projects on transportation and climate-change resilience; invest in IT and telecommunication infrastructure to lay the foundation for national digital transformation.
The Party leader set the tasks and solutions that will be submitted to the congress as followed:
Promoting Party Building and strong political system
The report vows to continue the fight against group interests and self-interested rent-seeking practices, political pluralism and multiparty practices, “peaceful transformation”, “self-evolution” and the division of power among the legislative, executive and judicial branches.
Improving qualifications of cadres, mostly key successors, is set to be another issues in the Party building. The move is aimed to ensure good working environment for them together with completing streamlined political system.
Enhancing the operations of state agencies in terms of institutionalization. It will result in disciplined working style and effective performance of political system from the grassroots to central levels.
Efforts to reform justice procedures are also included to win more trust and engagement to the Party, State, and the socialism.
Continuing growth momentum with science and technology-led approach
The report focuses on restructuring economic sectors, mainly in agriculture and rural development together with stepping up the industrialization and modernization pace. To make the goal achievable, it requires the encouragement of private sector, service sectors, and maritime economy with an aim to attain economic targets and protect the sovereignty.
The report calls for improving the management capability in macroeconomy. In terms of finance, it is necessary to curb the public debts, supervise budget spending, and restructure public procurement.
Making long-term goals and master planning in every sector is aimed to have well-prepared strategy for the sustainable development.
Applying advanced technologies and boosting digitalization, including 4.0 in the development, to make the economy more competitive and keep pace with regional peers is another priority mentioned in the report.
Rousing the national spirit and will to pursue the goal of a strong, prosperous and happy nation
It needs to put central point on patriotism, pride, self-reliance, compassion, solidarity, social consensus and national development aspirations of the entire nation.
Another goal is mobilizing both domestic strengths and international support to take advantages of local resources, ensuring social welfare and people-centered approach for fair and inclusive society.
Promoting social welfare is a must by conducting altogether programs on poverty eradication, calling on the state agencies to address the root causes of poverty, providing all people with basic needs and ensuring the poor to have accessed to productive resources.
In addition, making suitable policies and closing legal loopholes are also included in this topic.
Maintaining independence and strengthening national defense and security
It requires efforts to boost foreign affairs and international integration together with persistently keeping position on independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity to maintain peace and stability for the development.
Accordingly, socio-economic development and security and defense must be conducted together with intensified investment in armed forces, mostly strengthening the military forces towards modernization and elite by 2030.
It needs to be active in every case to fulfill given security and defense tasks. Meanwhile, promoting the external relations also requires tireless efforts.
Promoting the national solidarity by paying more attention to policies on ethnic minorities and religious practice
To make this goal attainable, it requires a political system working in a stable and transparent manner.
Tightening management of natural resources for environment protection and towards climate resilience
Authorized agencies need to complete legal framework and build strategies to effectively supervise natural resources, including land and water.
Meanwhile, more efforts are required to spend on information sharing and research to ensure water and food security, energy transition, carbon emissions, and green growth.
