Implementation of the revised constitution
During the implementation stage of the amended constitution, there were some
important practical movements, discussed below.
More open national elections
In a single-party polity like Vietnam where competitive elections are absent, the
Communist Party predominantly controls the national election and nominates
candidates. However, in the last decade, the country has seen a more complex
scenario in which NA elections reflected popular moves which were to a certain
extent beyond the domination of the Party.
Edmund Malesky, a political scientist at the University of California, San
Diego, observes that Vietnam’s elections are relatively more open than those
held in other one-party communist states such as Cuba and China. In Vietnam
there is a broader range of candidates, more competition for seats and a greater
risk of senior officials losing.
45
For example, in the most recent May 2011 NA
election the range of 827 candidates was actually very eclectic, with a number of
non-Party members, women, ethnic people, religious people, and business can-
didates. More importantly, the election results indicated a more open, or at least
less authoritarian, election system. First, among 500 elected candidates, forty-two
were non-Party members. Second, more self-nominated candidates won than
before, the number increasing from one in 2007 to four in 2011 ,allofwhomare
businesspeople. Third, more senior officials lost elections: a total of fifteen
candidates nominated by the central government failed, including some senior
incumbents of the NA.^46
The changing representative democracy
In the first decade of the present century, Vietnam’s representative democratic
institution has witnessed some unconventional developments. The NA in Vietnam
is conventionally viewed as a tractable instrument for the Communist Party to
formalize its policies through the channel of the Government. Although signs of
the socialist dogma of unity and co-ordination of powers still exist in the National
Assembly–Government relationship, the first decade of the present century indi-
cates that representative democracy in Vietnam has been incrementally increasing.
The national selected body has proven to be not a totally malleable device in
(^45) “Vietnam rulers reach out to business people,”www.ft.com/cms/s/ 0 /de 6 dd 360 - 82 fc- 11 e 0 -
85 a 4 - 00144 feabdc 0 .html#axzz 1 ZDMd 7 tfh(last visited October 16 , 2011 ).
(^46) “Cong bo Ket qua Bau cu Dai bieu Quoc hoi Khoaxiiiva Hoi dong Nhan dan cac cap
nhiem ky 2011 – 2016 ” (Announcement of the result of elections of National Assembly
13 th term and People’s Councils term 2011 – 2016 ),www.nclp.org.vn/thong_tin_congtac
lap_phap/cong-bo-ket-qua-bau-cu- 111 ai-bieu-quoc-hoi-khoa-xiii-va-hoi- 111 ong-nhan-dan--
cac-cap-nhiem-ky- 2011 – 2016 (last visited October 16 , 2011 ).