Streamlining the political system - a new revolution

Recently, when the Party, the State and the National Assembly raised the issue of streamlining the apparatus of the political system from the central to the grassroots level, reactionary forces and political opportunists shouted: "This is the way the Communist Party and the State of Vietnam destroy those who are not on the same side". Then there is "internal fighting, factional fighting", "creating conditions for subordinates to lobby to keep their positions or sit in new, higher positions"...

They fully understand that, for any state to operate effectively, it must have a streamlined, strong apparatus, instead of maintaining a cumbersome, bureaucratic, and weak apparatus.

It is undeniable that the great contributions of the contingent of cadres, civil servants, public employees, and armed forces over the past nearly 80 years since the founding of the country, the protection of the Fatherland, and the construction of the country up to now. The revolutionary achievements in each period have had the great contributions of the entire State apparatus in particular and the political system in general.

However, the current apparatus is still cumbersome, multi-layered, with many intermediate steps; functions and tasks are duplicated and overlapping... leading to low operational efficiency. It is worth mentioning that the streamlining of the apparatus has only been implemented strongly at the grassroots level, so the efficiency is not high. Every year, the State has to spend nearly 70% of the budget to support the apparatus. A figure worth pondering. The major obstacle to the goal set by the 13th Congress is that there are still many bottlenecks, and the issue of streamlining the apparatus is the "bottleneck of bottlenecks".

General Secretary To Lam affirmed that streamlining the political system's organizational apparatus is a particularly important task, a revolution. Without streamlining, development is impossible. A cumbersome apparatus causes waste and hinders development, which is one of the reasons why many of the Party's policies are slow to be implemented in real life or some policies are not implemented or are implemented in a formal manner in reality.

Renovating and restructuring the apparatus is a very difficult and sensitive task that directly affects each individual, each organization, agency and unit. Therefore, it requires the highest determination, the most drastic action and synchronization from the central to local levels.

To innovate a streamlined, effective and efficient political system, innovation must begin with the Party. The Party must take the lead in innovating itself in terms of organization and operation. The Government and the administrative apparatus at all levels must also be streamlined on the principle of multi-sectoral and multi-field. The National Assembly must streamline its apparatus and innovate its legislative thinking.

The most important thing in streamlining the apparatus is to improve the quality of the staff, civil servants and public employees in the political system, to overcome the situation of "correct procedures but not the right people", to improve effectiveness and efficiency.

To do so, it is necessary to first evaluate and review the work, functions and tasks of each department, each organization, apparatus and each cadre. On that basis, develop a comprehensive plan to streamline the political system, ensuring suitability for each industry, each locality, each economic, political and social characteristic.

Streamlining the apparatus of the political system is a mandatory requirement in the current context with the most important goal of improving the effectiveness and efficiency of operations, improving the quality of service to the people, to businesses and to serve the revolutionary goals in the new period, the development period set forth by the Resolution of the 13th National Party Congress.