DID Vietnam just witness a mini Hundred Flowers Campaign of China in the 1950s that appeared and disappeared in the blink of an eye in May this year?

The recently concluded election to the Vietnamese National Assembly raises important questions about the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) tightening control over national politics after briefly loosening its grip.

About 92 per cent of the candidates who ran for election in May for the 500-seat National Assembly were members of the CPV. Only 74 candidates were independents, down from 97 in the previous election in 2016. The scale of the election was massive, with more than 69 million people voting to elect the deputies in all constituencies nationwide every five years.

The reduction in the number of independents - whose candidacies were vetted by the party-controlled Vietnamese Fatherland Front - signals the desire of the CPV to silence criticism of its performance by non-party assemblymen and women.

The loosening and tightening of controls had something in common with the Hundred Flowers campaign of China's chairman Mao Zedong, who had briefly allowed criticism of the Communist Party of China to flourish in 1956-57.

In Vietnam, there appears to be a link between the declining numbers of candidates given approval to run and criticism, albeit infrequent, by the National Assembly, of the government's performance. The Assembly's critiques of government policy and initiatives is a relatively new phenomenon, because historically it has been supportive of state policy.

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The assembly has waded into sensitive issues, such as voting on the performance of government officials, and lifting a ban on same-sex marriages, allowing couples to hold marriage ceremonies but stopping short of official recognition.

Like the Communist Party of China, the CPV sees itself as a patriotic organisation that not only helped gain liberation from French and American imperialists, but also rid the country of what it calls the "traitorous South Vietnamese regime" that colluded with the United States to divide the country until it was defeated in 1975.

The CPV's patriotic role in the freedom struggle is undeniable, as the party is associated with chairman Ho Chi Minh who enjoys god-like status in the country.

But there are three troubling issues. First, the arrival of a new generation of Vietnamese who have not lived through the long liberation war is a cause for concern. The party and the government have tried to address the aspirations of young people, delivering them jobs and prosperity, but they may want greater freedom.

Secondly, the supporters of the defeated South Vietnamese regime that fled to the US have continued to stage anti-communist protests in their adopted homeland, which has given much concern to the authorities in Hanoi who view the frequent raising of South Vietnamese flags in southern California, for instance, as a perpetual threat.

Thirdly, the CPV and the government in Hanoi are worried about external threats in the South China Sea generated by China's sweeping claims to the maritime resources of the region. The external threat underscores the need to maintain domestic cohesion.

Then there is cultural tradition that makes the CPV behave in the way it does, especially in exercising power. The Vietnamese nation borrowed Confucian hierarchical principles from China, such as submission of an inferior to a superior. In this clearly defined order, the role of a leader was to serve as a model of virtue for the masses whom the CPV attempted to mould as the "new man" and "new woman" who were loyal to the party, possessed the quality of engaging in combat and in production, and stayed in close contact with the people.

DISTORTED BY FOREIGN MEDIA

The party's programme to create a "new hero" was given the title of "patriotic emulation" in the 1940s that aimed to create the new people who would be pressed into fighting famine, poverty, ignorance and foreign invaders. Under a National Emulation Committee that included delegates of the National Assembly, the workers dug canals and cleared land. At the end of the six-month programme, participants were given emulation certificates that they proudly displayed in their homes. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Vietnamese state tried to create the "emulation fighter" when the war against the French intensified, and the US replaced the departing French forces.

When war began against the South Vietnamese regime in 1964 and against the regime's backers, the United States, the following year, the communist party enlisted a new production and political elite in the towns and villages. Ho Chi Minh created categories of personnel known as "avant-garde workers", "exemplary soldiers" and "new heroes" to populate a "new model society" where political virtue was the driving principle to enthuse the masses into joining the war effort.

These models were not transitional. They contributed to postwar reconstruction when they were redeployed to shape the nation's imagination and to ensure that the patriotic communist memory remained fresh.

The foreign media routinely berates the Vietnamese electoral process as flawed and non-transparent. Scholars, however, believe the media perception increasingly distorts the facts.

The National Assembly still follows a choreographed script and has seen independent candidates fall in number. But there is optimism in the fact that voters in the provinces often reject government- and party-approved nominees at the ballot box.

Paul Schuler of the University of Arizona believes that Vietnam's electoral and legislative institutions are "some of the most open and active in the communist world", and that "unlike China, Cuba, and North Korea, as well as most former communist countries in Eastern Europe, Vietnam allows direct elections for National Assembly candidates with more candidates than seats available". It may come as a surprise that Vietnam encourages public debate through televised questioning of high-ranking government officials, as well as the prime minister.

Dr Schuler explains that "the legislature has gradually become more professionalised and active since the Doi Moi economic opening in 1986" as the country integrated with the world. The electoral process, however, has not changed as much because the CPV "exerts tremendous control over who is nominated to participate in the elections", and that "the control over the election process is key because this gives the party a key lever it can use to moderate debate in the legislature", he says.

The analogy with the Hundred Flowers Campaign has turned out to be accurate. They bloomed by bringing more independent candidates in the last assembly election, and then wilted.

• The writer is the editor-in-chief of Rising Asia Journal.