GRAFT ADMITTED IN HANOI

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31235, 6 December 1966, Page 19

GRAFT ADMITTED IN HANOI

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) SAIGON, Dec. 5. Failure to reach the people, corruption, high living and arrogance are everyday complaints against South Vietnamese officials, but it was only this week that North Vietnam conceded it suffered from the same problems, the “New York Times” reports. “Nhan Dan,” the North Vietnamese Communist Party newspaper, in an article signed by a member of the Politburo, reported a “fairly large number of shortcomings” and “numerous problems.” American specialists on North Vietnamese affairs interpreted the signed article as a high-level stamp of approval. Criticism in North Vietnam is usually anonymous and couched in bland phrases. Singled out for criticism in the article were cadres and Communist Party members. “Cases of dubious financial situations, corruption, abuses,

incorrect borrowing, unrestrained eating and drinking are not rare,” it said. American specialists suggested the effects of the war —especially of United States bombing of the North—had contributed to the shortcomings mentioned. However, the article made n< direct mention of the war. The specialists saw a parallel weakening of central authority due to the war in both North and South Vietnam.

The article criticised “comrades (who) have a shallow, sense of service to the masses, are deeply imbued with individualism, display bureaucracy, arrogance and arbitrariness, disregard the masses and do not trust or rely on the masses.” Similar criticism has been levelled at the South Vietnamese army, civil service and pacification programme. The article also charged “there are cadres and party members in villages and cooperatives who incorrectly apply party policy in delimiting areas and fields (between private and state farm land), distributing food, collecting aud purchasing goods, democratically managing co-opera-tives and other tasks.” This suggested that party officials are guilty of graft, a charge which United States interrogators have heard increasingly from captured North Vietnamese soldiers.