US embassy cable - 03HANOI2667

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 HANOI 002667 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
STATE FOR EAP/BCLTV AND DRL 
 
E.O. 12958:  N/A 
TAGS: PGOV, VM, DPOL 
SUBJECT:  National Assembly Fall Preview 
 
 
1. (U) Summary: During a month-long plenary session 
beginning October 21, the National Assembly is expected to 
approve nine draft laws, most significantly a new Criminal 
Procedures Code and a Land Law.  Major political issues to 
be debated include earlier access to defense lawyers for 
people under criminal investigation, the adoption of 
"adversarial" prosecution/defense courtroom procedures, the 
appropriation of lump sum budget transfers for provinces, 
and the division of two provinces into several smaller ones. 
End Summary 
 
2. (U) The fourth bi-annual session of the eleventh National 
Assembly (NA), elected in May 2002, is scheduled to open on 
October 21 and last for 33 working days.  During the 
session, delegates will debate, revise, and almost certainly 
pass nine draft bills including revisions and supplements to 
the existing Criminal Procedures Code, the Law on 
Organizations of the People's Council and People's 
Committees, the Law on Election to the People's Councils, 
the Land Law, the Law on Cooperatives, the Law on State- 
owned Enterprises, and provisions of three new laws 
governing "thi dua" (civic spirit), aquaculture, and 
construction. It will also assess and "give opinions" on 
proposed amendments to the laws on Bankruptcy and Credit 
Institutions, as well as on new drafts of the Civil 
Procedures Code, the Inspection Law, and the Law on Inland 
Water Transport.  Finally, it will hear a report on 
outstanding issues related to socialist land reform before 
1991, and may pass a resolution on the issue.  As in 
previous sessions, selected Ministers will face the 
delegates for question-and-answer sessions, although we do 
not know yet which Ministers will be called. 
 
3. (U) Discussions on draft amendments to the Criminal 
Procedures Code are expected to be among the most 
controversial.  The most high profile of these proposed 
changes is the move to allow attorneys access to clients 
earlier in the investigative process (septel).  Also 
significant is an attempt to incorporate elements of the 
"adversarial" litigation process familiar in Western 
countries - in which prosecution and defense debate a case 
before judges - into Vietnam's current "investigatory" 
litigation mechanism - in which judges take the lead in 
questioning the accused, and often try to extract 
confessions.  Many professional lawyers have spoken in favor 
of the adversarial approach, and it has some support among 
the full-time NA delegates, many of whom are lawyers 
themselves.  One vice chairman of the NA Law Committee has 
warned against expecting major changes, however, saying that 
even after reforms, the judging panel would still take the 
lead in questioning the accused. 
 
4.  (U)  One new feature will be that delegates will be 
expected to read proposed legislation themselves before the 
session; previously, the full text of each bit of 
legislation was read aloud.  The experiment will include 
reading only summaries, in an effort to speed up the NA's 
notoriously slow-paced deliberation process. 
 
5. (U) According to sources, the NA will also consider 
dividing the northwestern province of Son La - Vietnam's 
fifth largest - into two provinces, and the Central Highland 
province of Dak Lak - currently Vietnam's largest - into 
three provinces.  Local officials have complained that their 
large, mountainous, and poor provinces are too big for 
effective management, and that smaller provinces should be 
created to better encourage economic development. 
 
6. (U) According to senior staff members from the Office of 
the National Assembly, high in the agenda of the session 
will be discussions on appropriation of lump sum State funds 
for fiscal year 2004, in accordance with a revised Budget 
Law ratified in December last year. Currently the NA 
discusses and approves central, provincial, district, and 
commune level budgets.  This has created an unwieldy 
structure for budgetary agencies at the national level, and 
considerable opportunities for corruption among officials 
from central GVN offices dealing with State budget 
allocations.  Under the proposed revisions, the NA would 
only decide on funds that are to be allocated from the 
central budget to the budget of local provinces and cities. 
Subsequently, the local People's Council will decide on 
local budget estimates and distribution of spending among 
different departments, offices, and sectors. 
 
7. (U) Looking further ahead, the NA's fifth session slated 
for May 2004 is expected to discuss and pass six draft laws, 
plus three statures governing operations of its own Standing 
Committee, Council for Ethnic Affairs, and various other 
Committees. It is also planning to comment on eight other 
draft laws, including the long-awaited amended Law on Public 
Complaints and Denunciations.  For the sixth session, it is 
planning to consider and pass these eight laws, and comment 
on ten other draft laws, including a combined Investment Law 
governing both domestic and foreign investment, a Law on 
National Security, and a Law on National Defense. 
 
8.  (U)  Comment:  The National Assembly remains more a 
deliberative body than a true decision-making institution; 
its main role is publicly to ratify legislation drafted and 
proposed by the GVN, and it usually does so with little 
murmur.  The Land Law -- which directly affects the 
interests of a wide range of individual Vietnamese citizens 
-- has sparked heated discussions (including unsuccessful 
calls for revisiting decades-old "land reform" programs in 
which families lost their lands) in earlier sessions but 
most likely has now had the kinks worked out already to 
enable passage at this session, as predicted.   The GVN will 
be at pains also to prevent fireworks during the grilling of 
Ministers.  It will need to be careful, however;  the 
apparent effort in the last session to limit the time for 
actual Q&A by letting Ministers read lengthy statements 
first engendered much unnecessary disgruntlement among NA 
delegates. 
BURGHARDT