The fact that General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) cum President Nguyen Phu Trong re-appeared along with the Politburo’s meeting on the response to the Wuhan Flu pandemic was considered a “later rather than no” job and somewhat relieves public concerns, according to a Hanoi-based political analyst.
Dr. Dinh Hoang Thang, from the Institute of Development Affairs, former Vietnamese Ambassador to the Netherlands, commented that the Wuhan Flu pandemic could also cause Vietnam to rethink its epistemological thinking in relations with China.
First of all talking about the re-appearance of Mr. Trong, Dr. Dinh Hoang Thang said that the expected Politburo meeting was finally held on March 20, although it is better than late.
For more than two months, Mr. Trong did not appear, without any statement on the fight against pandemics that Vietnam’s masses, including civilians and civil society, consider unusual statues. Trong’s recent statement, somewhat relieved this concerns.
Often, the leaders’ sensitivity, attitude, and timely decisions on big and complex national issues such as the Wuhan Flu pandemic are extremely important.
It will establish the confidence of the masses in the leadership role of the party and the state, which is absolutely necessary to bring the country through today’s complicated and dangerous situations. Particularly for the call to contribute resources, Mr. Trong’s statement about preparing the worst possibility to have the best plan against the epidemic, as well as the previous statement of Prime Minister Phuc at the ceremony to launch the whole population against epidemic reminds me of the old “Golden Week.” The historical context may vary, but the tradition of mutual solidarity of the Vietnamese people always exists.
However, mobilizing people to contribute financially and in kind at this time is not easy. Firstly, people and small and medium enterprises are struggling very hard due to the epidemic.
Nobody dares to ask the government to spend hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars like those of other countries, but now it is more stressful than the war, people’s hearts are insecure, unlike during the “Golden Week” period.
Second, the law of war and the law of peacetime are different. People are now shocked by many post-war events, new wounds overlapping old scars. Especially, the injustice movement in recent years, which stretches from the city to the countryside, is a fact that cannot be underestimated, which will greatly impact the people’s response.
Thirdly, at present, the people’s faith in the government apparatus at all levels, in the party and state officials has shown many signs of decline due to corruption and abuse of power by a number of state officials.
Fourth, mobilizing people to donate must be conducted in parallel with overcoming the long-term consequences in all aspects for the people when the domestic and international economy can go into a deep crisis cycle. Popularity will be the final measure of the outcome of every campaign.
Dr. Thang also commented that the Wuhan Flu epidemic is an opportunity for Vietnam to “escape from China” and comment on whether this is feasible?
The problem of “escape from China” is not a new requirement. It is a pressing story that has long appeared in the political, economic and social life in Vietnam during the integration period. But it is also not only an urgent story of Vietnam alone.
Look how Italy “sank” too deeply into Beijing’s “silk road” and was “horribly involved“! It is a lesson for every nation.
Italy once allowed 100,000 Chinese workers from Wuhan and Wenzhou to work in its factories, who traveled between Wuhan and Northern Italy. Is it just a coincidence that Northern Italy is now a European hotspot for an outbreak?
However, the problem of “escaping China” so far has not been feasible, so far, for both Vietnam and the world. It is at a macroscopic level, both national and international, in both economic and geopolitical realm, it is as insecure as the question “to be or not to be” meaning “does it exist or not?”
It reflects the state of stalemate and torment in many ways across societies.
Some European countries themselves are also tied by China to economic interests. Particularly for Vietnam, for many reasons, this issue needs to be posed as a higher priority than other countries.
The Wuhan Pandemic opens up new opportunities and is likely the last chance for the whole country, from the people to the Vietnamese leadership to embark on concrete actions.
Initial results in Vietnam in isolation and claims to create new “kits” in testing are remarkable.
In recent years, the health sector of Vietnam has paid attention to public health, epidemiology and significant US assistance in organizing the system of Centers of Control and Disease Prevention (CDC).
These centers, together with trained medical staff, have been promoting their effectiveness in the prevention of Wuhan Flu in recent months.
However, it must be noted that this was the period when Vietnam concentrated its efforts to treat only 16 infected people. If tomorrow, the Wuhan Flu pandemic spreads across the country with hundreds, thousands of exposures, the story is not the same as handling 16 more people.
So, if someone is overly optimistic right now for you to think that “arrogance” is not worth it. The Bible teaches: When pride comes, disgrace follows, but with humility comes wisdom.
Even the opinions of responsible people in different countries show contradictions. There are quite confident and quite optimistic assessments, while there are comments that say we do not know if we can overcome the pandemic. This alone is enough to tell the complexity of this pandemic.
Emergency dispatch of the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee also issued on March 24 directing the suspension of most of the entertainment and beauty services and barbering … expected to cause millions of people to lose their jobs
The global and regional fight to deal with the swine flu epidemic is ongoing and has not yet ended, but there is something that countries and people right now need to rethink in terms of awareness (politics, society, humanities, psychology, geopolitics …). According to many forecasts, the world after the Wuhan Flu outbreak will be another world. Life after the pandemic will surely change and it is hard to come back like before, Dr. Thang said.
“Falling sky” was originally a folk idiom, but the Wuhan Flu translation could add to this idiom many new connotations. You have to accept some rules that before, you think only when “It was falling” could happen.
In the past, was it hard for you to imagine, deploying mass monitoring tools would become normal in every country? What is more, it is a step from “on the skin” surveillance to “under the skin” surveillance (See if we have a fever or not). If governments start to collect large-scale biometric data, “people of the state” will understand us better than we know ourselves.
Theorists will then issue books regarding epistemological rethinking. From “Wuhan Virus” to “Covid-19” is probably the biggest crisis for our generation.
The decisions that people and governments make in the future will shape the future of the world. Not only the health system is greatly affected, but also economic and political, religious and cultural …
In crisis, we face two particularly important options:
The first is to choose between dictatorial supervision or empowerment of citizens.
The second is to choose between nationalist isolation or global solidarity.
Instead of building a citizen surveillance regime, it is still not too late to build people’s confidence in science, government and journalism.
Certainly, the power of technology should be utilized, but technology must aim to increase the power of the people. The Wuhan Flu poses problems beyond the old norms in every territory, from politics, economics to morality and religion.
The new and most important perceptions for Vietnam can be summarized with the following 3 points:
- i) The next 13 Party Congress will be a memorable historical milestone if we can overcome the way of preparation and implementation as before;
- ii) The Government will set up a comprehensive plan for the “post-Covid-19” period while dealing with the pandemic;
- iii) The whole country embarked on preparing to deal with a changing national and international environment.
Once the environment changes, the small and large systems in that environment will certainly not be able to operate in the old fashioned way.
From traditional conception of geopolitics to institution, from psychosocial to the behavior of each individual …
All, if you want to survive, let alone develop, must change the root. The Communist Party or the Communist dictatorial state could not be different.
Thu Thuy from Hochiminh city – Thoibao.de (Translated)
