Unfair Elections Report
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[Vsg] Unfair Elections in Vietnam by Pham Doan Trang
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Guillemot Francois <francois.guillemot@ens-lyon.fr>
Apr 18, 2016, 12:33 PM
to vsg
Dear all,
for your information an interesting online report from Doan Trang :
This report provides an insight into the 2016 legislative elections in Vietnam, with an analysis of the political system and electoral process and how they are used to restrict the citizens’ right to participation. It also gives accounts of harassment and rights violations against the independent candidates who, for the first time in the country’s history, courageously speak out against the repressive system by standing for an election in which they see no chance of winning. Restriction of freedoms of movement, expression and assembly, intimidation and harassment by the police, defamation by the propagandists and the biased media are some among many forms of rights violation. Besides, the independent candidates are subjected to public haranguing in “meetings with constituents” which appear to be a procedure unique to China and Vietnam. The analysis and accounts highlight the conclusion that the legislative elections in Vietnam are not free and fair ones under the rule of the Vietnamese Communist Party. Steps should be taken to bring about a legal and political reform in the country to ensure promote human rights, of which the rights to participation are critical.
http://embedslide.net/slide-unfair-election-in-vietnam-s5712aa66c24e989722c65623.html
See also : https://indomemoires.hypotheses.org/22502
Best,
F
---
François Guillemot
Historien, Ingénieur de Recherche au CNRS
françois.guillemot@ens-lyon.fr
Institut d'Asie Orientale
ENS de Lyon, 15 parvis René Descartes
BP 7000 - 69342 Lyon Cedex 07 - France
Carnets de recherche & Ressources
http://vlc.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/
http://femmes-guerres.ens-lyon.fr/
http://guerillera.hypotheses.org/
http://indomemoires.hypotheses.org/
http://saigon.virtualcities.fr/
Le 16/04/2016 02:56, Dan Tsang a écrit :
Two features and one short depict queer cinema from Vietnam are will be screening Sunday, 17 April 2016 at VAALA's Vietnamese Film Festival that has just opened at the AMC 30 (The Outlets) in Orange, California.
See blog: http://subversities.blogspot.com/2016/04/queer-cinema-from-vietnam-at-vietnamese.html
dan
Daniel C. Tsang
Distinguished Librarian
Data Librarian and Bibliographer for Asian American Studies,
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David Brown <nworbd@gmail.com>
Apr 18, 2016, 1:13 PM
to Guillemot, vsg
In all but one respect, I concur with Francois' high evaluation of Pham Doan Trang's comprehensive report of candidate selection in the May 2016 DSRV legislative elections.
It is not correct that independent candidates are 'for the first time in the country’s history, courageously speak[ing] out against the repressive system by standing for an election in which they see no chance of winning.' The phenomenon of 'self-nominated candidates' is a well-established element of the 'democratic' window dressing that decorates the election of a new National Assembly.
According to an article I clipped from Viet Nam Net dated April 21, 2011, there were 83 self-nominated candidates in 2011 for 500 National Assembly seats. Fifteen of them, including 11 non-Party members, made it through the screening process. Also per Viet Nam Net, in 2007, there were 238 independent candidates, of whom 30 made it onto the ballot in various provinces and cities.
To my view, the most remarkable thing happening here is Ms Trang's determined work in this and other reports to explain to her own countrymen and to foreign observers how 'democracy' is managed in Vietnam.
Best to all, David
David Brown
freelance writer/analyst
Fresno, California USA
Thaveeporn Vasavakul <Thaveeporn@mail.kvsinter.com>
Apr 18, 2016, 7:19 PM
to David, Guillemot, vsg
To contribute to the discussion:
1. My notes show that the number of self-nominated candidates varied from session to session (please do not use - accuracy check still needed).
- For the 11th NA, 67 - two succeeded.
- For the 12th NA, 238 - one succeeded.
- For the 13th NA, 15 four succeeded.
- For the 14th NA, after the second round, the number was 154. After the third round of consultation last week, I noted two in Hanoi and four in HCM City. So the number has gone down.
2. The Elections Law states that the percentage of female deputies in the NA should be least 35%. I have looked at the Hanoi list of candidates (38 for 30 seats); the percentage of female candidates is low. Interesting to see whether the 35% requirement will be met.
3. In the context of one-party rule, there is not much to talk about when it comes to final candidate lists. But observing the list of the Hanoi candidates for the NA, I feel that many of them should be listed as candidates for the Citys Peoples Council - they are too parochial to go national. Tran Dang Tuan, for example, would be more "national" and cross-sector compared with many on the list. But maybe some are nominated for both the NA and the City Peoples Council!
Thaveeporn Vasavakul, Ph.D
GoSFI - Governance Support Facility Initiatives
www.gosfi.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Vsg on behalf of David Brown
Sent: Mon 4/18/2016 1:13 PM
To: Guillemot Francois
Cc: vsg (vsg@u.washington.edu)
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Unfair Elections in Vietnam by Pham Doan Trang
In all but one respect, I concur with Francois' high evaluation of Pham
Doan Trang's comprehensive report of candidate selection in the May 2016
DSRV legislative elections.
It is not correct that independent candidates are 'for the
?
> ??
> first time in the country's history, courageously speak out against the
> repressive system by standing for an election in which they see no chance
> of winning. Restriction of freedoms of movement, expression and assembly,
> intimidation and harassment by the police, defamation by the propagandists
> and the biased media are some among many forms of rights violation.
> Besides, the independent candidates are subjected to public haranguing in
> "meetings with constituents" which appear to be a procedure unique to China
> and Vietnam. The analysis and accounts highlight the conclusion that the
> legislative elections in Vietnam are not free and fair ones under the rule
> of the Vietnamese Communist Party. Steps should be taken to bring about a
> legal and political reform in the country to ensure promote human rights,
> of which the rights to participation are critical.
>
>
> http://embedslide.net/slide-unfair-election-in-vietnam-s5712aa66c24e989722c65623.html
>
> See also : https://indomemoires.hypotheses.org/22502
>
> Best>
> François Guillemot
> Historien, Ingénieur de Recherche au CNRS
> françois.guillemot@ens-lyon.fr
> *Institut d'Asie Orientale*
> *ENS de Lyon**,* *15 parvis René Descartes*
> *BP 7000 - 69342 Lyon Cedex 07 - France*
François Guillemot <francois.guillemot@ens-lyon.fr>
Apr 19, 2016, 11:37 PM
to Nguyen, Thaveeporn, Vietnam
Dear Mr Nguyen Quang A,
thank you for this additional and important details.
Since the works of Matthieu Solomon ten years ago (in French see below), in my knowlegde, there is no academic study entirely dedicated to the electoral process and composition of the Vietnamese national assembly (in a pluridisciplinary approach : historicy, sociology, political sciences. It would be interesting to conduct.
For sure works recent works of Mark Sidel, Jonathan London and some others is a good entry.
I take the occasion to salute your temerity in this long march for democracy in your country.
Matthieu Solomon's ref. on SUDOC:
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/70054369 (in Mark Sidel and Stéphanie Balme eds., 2007)
Best regards.
F
Le 20/04/2016 02:50, Nguyen Quang A a écrit :
It seems that there is some interest on the election processes in Vietnam. I share with you my presentation I have presented to EU mission in Hanoi.
1) There are at most 2 (not 4) independent self-nominees (one from Hanoi and one from Saigon) who have been selected as candidates because 2 of the 4 are sure self-nominees with consent of the party (i.e. belong to 2.1 class of self-nominees mentioned in the page 5 of my presentation): According to point 7 of Decision 47-QĐ/TW of Central Committee of CPV on 19 points which members of CPV cannot do, "members cannot nominate themselves ... when there is no permission of the party," but self-nominees Nguyen Anh Tri (from Hanoi) and Nguyen Thi Hong Chuong (from Saigon) are heads of their CPV organizations, so they are nominees by the party and not real self-nominees.
The emergence of some human-rights and democracy (HR-D) activists (about 20% of self-nominees) is the feature that distinguishes this election from all former ones.
2) This campaign is just a small step in a very difficult and long process of learning to promote good governance and democracy in Vietnam which has been lunched long ago, at least from 2013 with P72 petition.
Nguyen Quang A
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François Guillemot
Historien, ingénieur de recherche au CNRS
Institut d'Asie Orientale [IAO]
ENS de Lyon
15 parvis René-Descartes BP 7000
69342 Lyon cedex 07 - France
Francois.Guillemot@ens-lyon.fr
.
Mark Sidel <mark.sidel@wisc.edu>
Apr 20, 2016, 7:10 AM
to matsalomon@gmail.com, François, Nguyen, Thaveeporn, Vietnam
We can all salute Quang A’s “temerity” – François uses a great term for what Quang A and others are doing….
Copying in Matthieu Salomon (who may currently be in Indonesia), in case he is no longer on the list, so he can see the respectful citation to his work.
Mark Sidel
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Guillemot Francois <francois.guillemot@ens-lyon.fr>
Apr 20, 2016, 9:02 PM
to Paul, Vietnam, matsalomon
Dear Professor Schuler,
thank you for mentioning your research (with Edmund Malesky) and those of David Koh.
As I am a reader of JVS I should mention your work, forgive me for this omission.
Thank you also for direct access to your paper "Star search", with strong statistical analysis which is very interesting.
Best
F
---
François Guillemot
Historien, Ingénieur de Recherche au CNRS
françois.guillemot@ens-lyon.fr
Institut d'Asie Orientale
ENS de Lyon, 15 parvis René Descartes
BP 7000 - 69342 Lyon Cedex 07 - France
Carnets de recherche & Ressources
http://vlc.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/
http://femmes-guerres.ens-lyon.fr/
http://guerillera.hypotheses.org/
http://indomemoires.hypotheses.org/
http://saigon.virtualcities.fr/
Le 20/04/2016 18:57, Schuler, Paul Joseph - (pschuler) a écrit :
This is an interesting discussion. This year's self-nominees, while not unprecedented in number or even political orientation, have learned from the past as to the obstacles that they will face. This has allowed them to shine a light on the specific institutions used to block certain self-nominees.
Regarding François's post, in addition to the pieces he mentioned, Edmund Malesky and I have two papers explicitly related to the Vietnamese electoral system. "Paint-by-numbers" describes the electoral institutions and their implementation in 2007. "Star search" focuses on self-nominees more explicitly. It conducts an analysis of self-nominees from HCMC in 2007, showing that party membership is the most important determinant of who makes it through the vetting process.
Paint-By-Numbers: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/vs.2009.4.1.1?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Star Search: http://search.proquest.com/docview/1327826055?pq-origsite=gscholar
Star Search: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2333320
In addition to ours and Salomon's work, David Koh also has a discussion of the electoral system in his book "Wards of Hanoi."
Best
Paul Schuler
Assistant Professor
School of Government and Public Policy
University of Arizona
Bill Hayton <bill.hayton@bbc.co.uk>
Apr 20, 2016, 9:22 PM
to Guillemot, Paul, Vietnam, matsalomon@gmail.com
I suggested to Mai Khoi that she keep a diary of the nomination process and all the various obstacles – formal and informal – put in her way. She did this and I have an account of her travails up until about two weeks ago. I imagine she has updated it since. It’s a fascinating insight into the blocking process. It seems to me that local officials are just expected (or are instructed) to use their initiative to find whatever excuse they can to obstruct the nomination of unwelcome candidates. Some tricks are effective and some not - a determined and resourceful candidate, like Mai Khoi, can overcome them. The third stage of the filtering process still seems to be an effective block, however.
Bill Hayton