Long and winding road to reforms

Long and winding road to reforms

Economic reforms bring mixed results in Southeast Asia's
underdeveloped region. Andrew Nette examines the changes in this
Inter Press Service report.

HANOI: When aid and political support from the former
Soviet Union dried up in the late 1980s, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia
all took the road to reforms. Since then, however, the three
Indochinese countries have taken widely divergent paths.

The change has been most dramatic in Cambodia, where a UN
peace plan helped it become the only Indochinese country to
establish a multi-party system. The groundwork for this shift was
laid in 1991 when the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party,
which had ruled Cambodia since Pol Pot's fall in 1978, changed
its name to the State of Cambodia party and formally dumped any
adherence to Marxism.

Vietnam and Laos also tempered their Marxist rhetoric, but
they modeled their reforms on the Chinese model: opening their
economies while retaining one-party rule.

Vietnam's free market reforms have produced an annual growth
rate of nine percent. But the continued secrecy on economic
affairs and the fact that 87 percent of the nation's business
capital remains under state control shows Hanoi is still lukewarm
toward capitalism.

Indeed, speaking at the 50th anniversary celebrations of
Vietnamese independence in September, President Le Duc Anh
pledged the government would continue toward the creation of "a
just and civilized society along the socialist oriented line".

For its part, Laos launched economic reforms in 1979, four
years after the Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP) took
power. A decade later, Vientiane introduced the `new economic
mechanism' that included measures aimed at attracting foreign
investment, cutbacks in state services and widespread
privatization.

The transition has been relatively painless in Laos. "The
country was in a better position to move more quickly with reform
because in a sense their socialist activities had not penetrated
so far as the system has in China and Vietnam," says Grant Evans,
an Australian academic who has written widely on Laos.

But Laos echoes Vietnam in making clear that economic openness
should not be confused with political change. Both countries
stress that there is no one rule book for democracy, and that
political systems should be applied as befit the "special
conditions" pertaining to a country's economic and cultural
development.

In Vietnam, these sentiments have been accompanied by stepped-
up attacks on what are apparently considered `hostile forces'
working against the country. Barely a week after U.S. Secretary
of State Warren Christopher visited Hanoi in August, for
instance, seven Vietnamese and two Vietnamese-Americans were
given stiff sentences for activities described by the local media
as "very serious violations of national sovereignty and
security".

In June, two elderly Communist Party dissidents were also
arrested, in what political experts say was a retort to their
calls for more pluralism in the party.

The experts say these moves seem like the authorities'
attempts to assert control after the normalization of relations
with the United States and Vietnam's entry into the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Says one analyst: "It's the
leadership's way of saying even though they are opening up to the
outside world, the party is still very much in control."

The arrests coincided with official denunciations of Western
interference in Vietnam's human rights affairs. "We are willing
to continue a dialogue on human rights, which we consider a
global issue, but do not accept it as a condition for trade and
economic relations," said a foreign ministry spokesperson.

In Laos, meanwhile, the LPRP has also explicitly ruled out any
chance of sharing power. Evans says a key difference in Laos is
that there is little demand for change. "The relative isolation
of the vast majority of the people from the affairs of the city
has made them less interested in politics, " he says, noting the
largely peasant-based nature of Laotian society.

But not everyone agrees there has been no political change in
Vietnam and Laos. Says a Vietnamese official who asked not to be
named: "Many in the foreign media say reform has just been
economic. Things have definitely become more liberal."

He points to the growing independence of the respective
National Assemblies in both countries, the lifting of internal
travel restrictions, and the rising availability of foreign media
such as newspapers and satellite television. Says the official: "
Three years ago you could not even invite a foreigner into your
home without permission but now this is no longer the case. The
bottom line is that while change is happening it will be step by
step."

Some observers believe Laos and Vietnam have good cause to be
wary of the changes sweeping them, as both poor countries
confront a painful integration into the world economy on terms
that can hardly be considered favorable.

Neighboring Cambodia has also provided them vivid proof for
their assertion that multi-party systems bring instability and
could endanger economic growth. Vientiane and Hanoi had pointed
to Cambodia under the direction of the United Nations as an
example of the risks of unrestricted opening to the outside
world: a lack of indigenous sovereignty, economic chaos, a rise
in crime, the influx of foreigners with dubious intentions and
connections.

And while the 1993 polls went smoothly, many believe
Cambodia's human rights situation two years after the UN
peacekeepers left is far worse than that of its two neighbors.
These include attacks on the press, and what a 1994 U.S. State
Department report called "credible reports that individual
members of the security forces committed serious human rights
violations including instances of extra-judicial killings".

Cambodia also suffered a series of financial scandals recently
and is still battling the Khmer Rouge insurgency that drains
drain resources and creates a general climate of uncertainty.

But the future of the one-party rule in Laos and Vietnam
depends on the continued ability of Chinese-style reforms to
generate sufficient economic development to buy off the emerging
middle class of these nations. Adds Evans: "If the LPRP and the
Vietnamese Communist Party can transform themselves into straight
nationalist parties in the tradition of capitalist one-party
states so common in the developing world, they might survive in
the long run."

-- IPS