Since the 7^th National Party Congress in 1994, the Party has warned of four grave threats, which include corruption and wastefulness.

To meet the urgent social requirements for combating corruption, the Anti-Corruption Ordinance was issued six years ago. However, corruption is still a common occurrence, particularly in the domains of budget management, capital construction investment, land use and management and taxation.

Corruption involves not only individuals but also major rings with the participation of many State officials. The most typical corruption cases are the La Thi Kim Oanh case, the Trade Ministry’s quota allocation case, the land management case in Hai Phong and the Ministry of Transport’s Project Management Unit (PMU)18 case.

Reality shows that corruption often relates directly senior officials, but no specific or drastic measures have been undertaken so far to combat corruption effectively.

While all cadres from provinces to central agencies call for fighting corruption, who is the "fighter", who is the main culprit and who must be responsible for corrupt behavior in their sectors?

As mentioned above, corruption often occurs among senior officials. If there is no strict anti-corruption mechanism, can such "enthusiastic" staff fight on their own? Cadres play a pivotal role in combating corruption.

Corruption proceeds from individualism in each official. Thereby, it is imperative to promote officials with both professional capacity and revolutionary ethics. "Morality" is not a common criterion but the morality of an official should be based on public opinion and the trust of the masses placed in the official.

At a recent meeting with media workers, former Party General Secretary Le Kha Phieu said cadres can conceal their corrupt behaviors but can not conceal it from public.

Regarding supervision, if democracy and open and transparent mechanisms are effectively put in place, the masses will be the most powerful and objective supervising forces. But in fact, when people detect the signs of corruption and bribery among officials, their petitions are often returned to them, and they then become victimised by the official concerned.

Many people who are afraid of being victimised, write anonymous letters to denounce corrupt behavior but their letters are not accepted because they are considered nothing but to cause "troubles" and "instability in internal solidarity".

The promulgation of the Anti- corruption Law has initially won the trust of people throughout the country. It is hoped that the Party will mobilise all forces, especially mass organisations in the fight against corruption.