Vietnam expert at the University of New South Wales, said the inclusion of businessm

The World Trade Organisation's members agreed to try to salvage some of the Doha round's least contentious proposals that affect the poorest countries, for approval at a ministerial conference in December. Still, some members warned that even this could be difficult, with troublesome issues such as cotton subsidies retained in the watered-down negotiations.





Party wins big in Vietnam

Reuters 4 June 2011



As has happened every few years since the mid-1940s Vietnam’s Communists won parliamentary elections last month by a landslide, claiming 91.6 percent of the chamber’s 500 seats, officials announced on Friday. No surprises there. The Communist Party has a constitutionally-mandated monopoly on power. We noted in a story on election day that the vote was rigged to retain party control although the outcome would allow for the legislature’s role in policymaking to continue to grow incrementally.

On Friday the results showed that more self-nominated candidates and more businessmen were elected to the unicameral body this time around than ever before. Four out of 15 self-nominated candidates made it this year, including the vice chairwoman of Hanoi’s young businesspeoples’ association and a doctor who runs his own hospital. Four years ago at the last National Assembly election only 1 of the 30 self-nominees who ran landed a seat.

Voters handed seats to Dang Thanh Tam and Dang Thi Hoang Yen, two of the country’s best known capitalists and perhaps the country’s richest brother and sister duo. They preside over the conglomerate Saigon Invest Group and other companies. Pham Huy Hung, head of VietinBank, the country’s biggest partly-private bank, also got seat. So did Dinh La Thang, chairman of state oil and gas group Petrovietnam, which is probably the country’s most influential company. State media said its revenues this year are expected to be close to a quarter of the nation’s GDP and it makes annual tax contributions that put it in a league of its own.

Carlyle Thayer, a Vietnam expert at the University of New South Wales, said the inclusion of businessmen in the national assembly followed the Party’s decision to allow entrepreneurs into its ranks and even install some on its policy-making Central Committee at a congr
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