VIETNAM'S top leader yesterday warned that corruption loomed as a 'fatal disease' for a leadership that needed to get closer to the people.
Communist Party General Secretary Do Muoi told the opening of a crucial parliamentary session that leaders needed to be more open, but he warned that any push for freedom outside the party's vast umbrella would be punished.
'We know that corruption, waste and bureaucracy cause the illness of the state . . . those who are given power are very likely to abuse that power,' Mr Muoi said in a rare state-of-the-nation address to National Assembly delegates and foreign ambassadors.
'Moral degradation has yet to be put right . . . We need to create a new synergy and we need an army of cadres and functionaries who are virtuous.' The speech by Mr Muoi, 80, marked his first major address since the Communist Party congress last year. It is expected to be one of his last before retirement and dealt chiefly with social problems rather than sought-after economic reforms.
Some foreign ambassadors saw it as a sign that the party had learned some hard lessons from recent peasant unrest in the heartland northern province of Thai Binh.
The party was keen to show it could respond yet had been 'clearly rattled' and wanted to shore up its power, one veteran envoy said.
'Socialist democracy is a great revolutionary process and it needs to be striven for patiently,' Mr Muoi said, without any direct reference to the recent unrest.
