Promoting Party spirit in building a socialist rule of law state in Vietnam

Along with the implementation of the renovation process and the development of a socialist-oriented market economy, our country has been gradually building and perfecting the socialist rule-of-law state of the people, by the people, for the people, under the leadership of the Party. Resolution No. 27-NQ/TW dated November 9, 2022 of the 13th Party Central Committee on continuing to build and perfect the socialist rule-of-law state of Vietnam in the new period is a milestone and an important turning point.

For the first time, our Party issued a specialized Resolution on the Socialist Rule of Law State, which identified the main goals as: Building a complete legal system that is strictly and consistently implemented; upholding the Constitution and the law, respecting, ensuring and effectively protecting human rights and citizens' rights; State power is unified, clearly assigned, closely coordinated and effectively controlled; professional, rule of law and modern administration and judiciary; a streamlined, clean and effective state apparatus; a contingent of cadres, civil servants and public employees with adequate qualities and capacity, truly professional and honest; modern and effective national governance; meeting the requirements of rapid and sustainable national development, becoming a developed country with high income in the socialist orientation by 2045.

Successful implementation of these goals is very important, a solid premise for the country to develop sustainably in the new era, the era of national growth.

Implementing Resolution No. 27-NQ/TW, in the past nearly 2 years, we have achieved encouraging results. In particular, law-making has many innovations, policy response capacity has been enhanced, contributing to removing difficulties and obstacles, promoting production and business, improving people's material and spiritual life, ensuring national defense and security; the work of organizing law implementation has been increasingly linked with law-making and perfecting; administrative reform and digital transformation have been promoted and achieved certain results; the fight against corruption and negativity has been carried out methodically, regularly and achieved many results with the spirit of no forbidden areas, no exceptions, handling one case, warning the whole region, the whole field, thereby helping to strengthen one step of discipline, responsibility, and strictness in performing public duties.

However, the construction and completion of the socialist rule of law state of Vietnam still has many shortcomings and limitations.

Awareness of the importance of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam's rule of law state is sometimes and in some places uneven. Some major policies and orientations of the Party have not been institutionalized promptly and fully, or have been institutionalized but their feasibility is not high; the legal system still has contradictory and overlapping provisions, which are not suitable for economic and social development, and are slow to be supplemented, amended, and replaced.

Mechanisms, policies and laws have not yet created a truly favorable environment to promote innovation and attract resources from domestic and foreign investors as well as from the people.

The work of arranging and perfecting the organization of the State administrative apparatus to be streamlined, operate effectively and efficiently, reduce focal points and intermediate levels is still inadequate, some parts are still cumbersome, overlapping between the legislative and executive branches, not really meeting the requirements of improving the effectiveness and efficiency of management.

Some ministries and sectors have not promoted decentralization and delegation of power to localities, doing local work instead, leading to the existence of a mechanism of asking and giving, which can easily give rise to negativity and corruption.

Administrative reform, digital transformation, e-government and digital government development are still limited. Law and policy enforcement is still a weak link, and a number of officials are not proactive and lack responsibility in performing public duties; the situation of shirking responsibility, avoiding responsibility, and "blaming" the legal system for not performing duties and tasks still exists in a number of ministries, branches and localities.

The above-mentioned shortcomings and limitations have diminished the significance and role of the Vietnamese socialist rule-of-law state in practice.

To realize the country's development goals in the era of the Vietnamese people's rise, it is necessary to continue to innovate the Party's leadership and governance methods over the State and society; promote the people's mastery and harmoniously handle the relationship between the Party's leadership, the State's management, the people's mastery and promote the position and role of each of these factors in the process of building and perfecting the socialist rule-of-law state of Vietnam, in which it is necessary to pay attention to the following basic issues:

One is,Our Party is the ruling Party, the Party's leadership is absolute, direct, comprehensive, covering all fields of politics, economics, culture, society, national defense, security, foreign affairs...

The characteristic of the Socialist Rule of Law State of Vietnam is that it is under the leadership of the Party. Therefore, building a Socialist Rule of Law State is a measure and method to successfully implement the goal of our Party as defined in the Party Charter: "building an independent, democratic, prosperous Vietnam, a fair and civilized society, where no one exploits another, successfully implementing socialism and ultimately communism".

The Party leads through guidelines and policies; the leadership institutionalizes guidelines and policies into laws to manage the State and society. Thus, the laws in the socialist rule of law state need to be continuously improved to institutionalize the Party's guidelines and policies, promote democracy, serve the people, recognize, respect, ensure, and protect human rights and civil rights.

To effectively carry out this work, it is necessary to have an effective control mechanism for institutionalizing the Party's guidelines, policies and guidelines into State laws. At the same time, there must be a strict, scientific and democratic law-making process so that policies and laws fully reflect the will and aspirations of the people, protect the interests of the State, the legitimate and legal rights and interests of organizations and individuals, encourage innovation and creativity, attract all resources for development; but also be flexible to promptly respond to policies, have timely solutions to handle practical problems that arise that slow down development according to the principle of protecting and ensuring the interests of the nation and people first and foremost.

As the body exercising legislative power, the National Assembly needs to play a leading role and have solutions to ensure that the legal system is enacted to meet the requirements of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The National Assembly Standing Committee needs to promote its role as the competent agency to interpret the law so that problems in the implementation of laws are promptly resolved, meeting the requirements of life.

In the process of organizing law enforcement, the Government needs to monitor and evaluate the situation of law enforcement to promptly detect legal provisions that are contradictory, overlapping, and inconsistent with reality, hindering innovation, attracting investment resources, production, and business, in order to take measures to handle them, not allowing some legal provisions to become bottlenecks that hinder the implementation of human rights, civil rights, and socio-economic development.

Second,Under the leadership of the Party, the State manages society by law, constantly promoting democracy so that people can participate in State management activities according to the provisions of the Constitution and the law.

In the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the state apparatus is scientifically organized, state power is unified, with division of labor and coordination among agencies in the exercise of legislative, executive and judicial powers. Public service activities must ensure compliance with the law, exercise of powers according to duties and competence, and be subject to strict inspection and control.

In addition, with the characteristics of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam under the leadership of the Party, the leadership positions in the state apparatus are structured into corresponding party committee leadership positions responsible for leading and directing the activities of agencies in the state apparatus from the central to the grassroots levels, forming a tight leadership structure of the Party over state management activities.

From this principle and practice, in order to promote the effectiveness of state management activities for society by law in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, it is necessary to strengthen two factors at the same time: Virtue governance and rule of law. In which, the "virtue governance" factor is the promotion of the advantages, strengths, position, and role of grassroots Party organizations, the pioneering and exemplary nature of Party members and cadres to lead the "rule of law" factor, which is the implementation of social management by law.

The rule of law is a manifestation of the socialist rule of law state, therefore, party members and officials must be exemplary and take the lead in implementing and obeying the law.

In addition, state agencies are responsible for organizing the enforcement of laws in their areas of management. Therefore, party members who are civil servants and public employees need to actively resolve work within their authority and complete their tasks well; proactively detect and resolve difficulties and obstacles in practice, especially difficulties and obstacles in law enforcement, in order to promptly find solutions or advise and report to competent authorities for handling.

In other words, there will be no socialist rule of law state in reality if cadres, party members, and state agencies are indifferent, irresponsible, and insensitive to the legitimate rights and interests of the people, businesses, and socio-economic development.

Promoting the revolutionary ethics of each party member and cadre, the sense of responsibility and initiative of each agency and unit in the state apparatus, the goals of administrative reform and judicial reform will be realized; people and businesses will truly be the center, the objects of service according to the principle of the rule of law, then the law will enter life, the law will comprehensively and fully regulate all social relations.

As a result, society will operate and develop in accordance with the guidelines and policies issued by the Party. From there, our country will achieve the goals of economic and social development, ensuring national defense and security in accordance with the Platform and goals for national development by 2030 and 2045 set by our Party.

Third,In the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the People are identified as the masters according to the law and operate according to the principle of "people know, people discuss, people do, people check, people supervise, people benefit".

However, to have real democracy, in addition to having a complete legal system according to the criteria of a socialist rule-of-law state, the effective operation of the political system must also meet and be consistent with the principle of respect for the Constitution and the law.

Similar to state management, the position and role of grassroots Party organizations and the promotion of the vanguard, exemplary, and self-sacrificing nature of Party members and cadres for the common cause are important in promoting the people's mastery in participating in state management and social management.

To do this, it is necessary to innovate and improve the quality of grassroots Party cell activities, ensuring that Party cell activities are substantive and effective. In addition to implementing, thoroughly understanding, and studying documents and resolutions of higher levels as is currently done, the content of grassroots Party cell activities needs to be researched and supplemented with topics such as: Legal content that needs to be implemented; issues raised by legal practice related to people's rights; issues of socio-economic development, ensuring security, order, and safety that need to be resolved; issues of public opinion and the masses that need to be oriented towards viewpoints, policy content, laws, and fighting against the wrong viewpoints of hostile forces.

To achieve the goals of building a socialist rule-of-law state in Vietnam, these practical issues need to be discussed by Party committees at all levels and thoroughly disseminated to Party members right from the grassroots level with the spirit that each Party cell is a cell of our Party.

To strengthen the Party, each grassroots Party cell needs to promote its role and innovate its activities to make practical contributions to the Party. Each Party member is an important factor in spreading the spirit of democracy and the rule of law to the people; thereby promoting democracy among the people, making all individuals and organizations agree and support the Party's guidelines and policies, the State's laws and proactively comply with and enforce the law.

Under the leadership of the Party, socialist democracy is promoted, the people are the subject of the process of building and perfecting the socialist rule of law state of Vietnam, each citizen actively and proactively participates in the work of building and perfecting the law, has a sense of respect for the law, which will create the strength of the entire political system to complete the goals of economic and social development, ensure national defense and security and bring the country into the era of the rise of the Vietnamese people.