•  bangkok
• Friday, January 28, 2011
• Inter Press Service

A week after Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party ended its pivotal congress of the country’s political elite, there is little evidence in the state-controlled media of a possible return to the openness that once saw high-profile corruption scandals exposed in print here.

'This is the way it is going to be,' a senior Vietnamese journalist told IPS on condition of anonymity, pointing to the staid diet of news filling the pages in the Southeast Asian nation, home to an estimated 700 newspapers and magazines. 'The message from the congress to journalists was very clear.'

'Nobody will want to upset the ruling party,' he added. 'They know the price if they dare.' Such fear emerged at the beginning of the Eleventh National Congress, when Dinh The Huynh, the editor-in-chief of ‘Nhan Dan’, the Communist Party’s official news outlet, joined other leaders of the party hierarchy to stamp out arguments calling for 'all forms of pluralism'.

It amplified what the Vietnamese had learnt on the eve of the Congress, which ran from Jan. 12 to 19. At that time Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung issued an executive decree that outlawed fundamental features that are the stock in trade of journalists pursuing investigative stories: unnamed confidential sources.

The 44-page decree, which comes into force Feb. 25, 'outlines new monetary penalties for journalists who refuse to divulge their news sources or publish articles under pseudonyms,' noted the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York-based global media rights watchdog, soon after. '[The new decree] supersedes any similar decrees issued in the past,' CPJ added.

The penalty of 2,000 dollars would be levied against journalists who publish articles that are 'not in the interest of the people', reveal 'state secrets', or expose 'non-authorised information'.

'This new decree aims to increase government control over Vietnam’s already over-regulated and highly suppressed media,' says Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. 'The language of the decree is overly broad and represents the government’s latest use of rule by law justifications to limit press freedom.'

The emergence of Nguyen Phu Trong - the new general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) - as the most powerful political figure in the country also served as a reminder that journalists in the country are not defenders of the right to free expression. Trong is a former editor of the ‘Communist Review’, a CPV journal.

Trong was chosen as the party boss on the last day of the secretive congress, which was attended by 1,400 delegates representing the party’s 3.6 million members. He was a compromise candidate to bridge the differences between the premier, Dung, and leading party member Truong Tan Sang, who was appointed president.

'Trong is considered as pro-Chinese and orthodox. He is a hard-line Marxist ideologue,' Vo Tran Nhat, executive secretary of Action for Democracy in Vietnam, a Paris-based group of Vietnamese political exiles, told IPS. 'In spite of the unanimity proclaimed during the Congress, Trong and other members of the Politburo have been criticised widely.'

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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