Edmund Malesky Comments on Openness of Vietnam Elections
Vietnam rulers reach out to business people
05/20/2011
Ben Bland,
Financial Times
When Nguyen Quang Huan, a 47-year-old Hanoi businessman, told friends he wanted to stand for Vietnam’s Communist party dominated parliament, they told him he was “crazy”.
He had quit his job in the state sector 10 years earlier to set up a development consultancy after becoming fed up with government bureaucracy.
Despite his friends’ misgivings, he decided to nominate himself, emboldened by the unprecedented level of independence shown by the national assembly during its last four-year term, when deputies rejected government proposals, grilled ministers in hearings and even called for a vote of confidence in the prime minister.
“If you’re involved in business you can benefit only a few hundred people but if you go into politics, you can help a million,” says the general director of Thang Long Infrastructure.
Mr Huan is one of more than a dozen business people standing for election to the national assembly on Sunday, including one of Vietnam’s richest men, Dang Thanh Tam, and his sister, Dang Thi Hoang Yen, also a wealthy business owner.
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Edmund Malesky can comment on political development in Vietnam and China, as well as comparative political economy in Southeast Asia. He also can provide insight into the choices underlying the decisions of foreign investors and thereby the globalization debate, especially in regard to the discussion of "sweatshops" in developing countries.
