Vietnam’s first openly gay candidate sets sights on National Assembly seat in Sunday’s vote
- Luong The Huy, 32, wants to boost the voices of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, who have long felt discrimination in Vietnam
- But getting his name on the ballot in a communist, one-party state where fewer than one in 10 candidates are independents was no simple task
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Huy, 32, running as an independent candidate for Vietnam’s National Assembly in elections to be held across the country on Sunday and wants to boost the voices of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, who have long felt discrimination.
But getting his name on the ballot in the communist, one-party state was no simple task.
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First openly gay candidate runs for Vietnam’s National Assembly
At the last elections five years ago, more than 100 independent candidates – including dissidents, a taxi driver and a pop star – tried to run, but just a handful made it through the gruelling selection process. Now that he has made it this far, he is clear about what he wants to achieve.
“I want people’s voices to be heard,” Huy said from his Hanoi office, sitting beside a framed poster bearing the slogan “Human rights are for everyone”.
Huy, who is currently director of Vietnamese NGO iSEE, which aims to empower minority groups to protect and promote their rights, has been campaigning for a decade to improve the lives of the Vietnamese LGBT community.
He once addressed a session of the UN Human Rights Council and was listed by Forbes as one of the 30 most inspiring people under the age of 30 in Vietnam.
But despite studying law – Huy got a scholarship from the US’s Fulbright Programme to study at the University of California – he says he has struggled to bring policy to the people who matter in Vietnam’s opaque governmental system.
“If I’m a member of the National Assembly, that path will be shorter, easier and more convenient for the community groups we serve,” he said.
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Vietnam is seen as relatively progressive on LGBT issues compared with some other countries in Asia.
But although the country lifted its ban on same-sex marriage in 2015, it stopped short of full legal recognition for those unions, and a long-promised transgender law to allow legal gender changes has not yet materialised.
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In schools, misinformation about sexual orientation and gender identity is widespread and some children are taught by both teachers and parents that being gay is a mental illness, according to a Human Rights Watch report published last year.
“Some people find it hard to accept someone from the minority LGBT community representing them at a powerful legislative body,” Huy said.
“There have been [negative] comments about me personally, about how I look and about my sexual orientation.”
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Huy had pinned his hopes on votes from millennials and Generation Z, but to his surprise, many of his backers seem to be older men and women.
Some have messaged him privately, while others have openly declared their support on social media.
“Suddenly I realised that my support network isn’t as small as I thought it was,” he said. “I have truly made a step out to the huge society beyond.”
There are more than 850 candidates competing on Sunday for one of almost 500 seats in Vietnam’s parliament, which is always dominated by members of the ruling Communist Party and rarely seen to fight for the general public.
Of the 868 candidates, 74 are independents, down from the 97 in the previous elections in 2016, while local media say the number of assembly deputies who were not party members halved over the last three elections.
Despite increasing openness to social change and a plethora of free trade deals, the party – one of the last ruling communist parties in the world – retains tight control over Vietnam and its media, and tolerates little dissent.
Independents must be vetted by the Vietnamese Fatherland Front, which the party essentially controls.
People will keep on talking about the first gay candidate, whatever the result may be
But Huy believes he may be able to bring about real change for ordinary Vietnamese.
“I may be the first [openly gay man to run for a seat] but I hope I will not be the only one,” he said.
“People will keep on talking about the first gay candidate, whatever the result may be. This is a story for those in the future who can accomplish even more than I do.”
Despite the Communist Party’s decades of firm control in Vietnam, its government portrays itself as embattled in elections, which are held every five years.
“As election day nears, hostile forces and political opportunists have increased their propaganda, abusing democracy and human rights to combat the election,” To An Xo, a security ministry spokesman, said in a statement this week, adding there were conspiracies to “undermine the party and the state.”
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Vietnam’s foreign ministry, which handles enquiries from international media, did not respond to a request for comment on what hostile forces Xo was referring to.
Official data shows that 99 per cent of Vietnam’s 67.5 million registered voters took part in the 2016 elections. The ballot is anonymous, but each voter’s name, age, occupation, ethnicity and address are posted outside polling centres.
Additional reporting by Reuters
