Edmund Malesky Quoted on Vietnam's Commitment to Fight Red Tape
Analysts evaluate government changes
07/29/2011
An Dien,
Thanh Nien News
Le Hien Duc, 80, worries that she won’t be able to help all the people who need her.
The retired school teacher and grandmother of eight has become Vietnam’s best-known whistleblower. Case documents and complaints from disgruntled people around the country have piled up in a corner of her house in Hanoi.
“Corruption is only getting worse, day by day,” said Duc, who won Transparency International’s Integrity Award in 2007. “Over the past five years, the number of complaints I receive has jumped from dozens to thousands, every day.”
Duc, who used to work as a message decoder for revered founding father Ho Chi Minh, has spent her retirement poring over complaints from people all over the country. Even in her old age, she has continued to petition the authorities in the search for justice.
But Duc says she’s only seen a small fraction of the complaints addressed. She remains undaunted.
“I will continue fighting corruption,” she said. “Otherwise the poor suffer most.”
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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.
