On May 13, in Hanoi, General Secretary and President To Lam chaired a working session with a number of ministries, departments, branches, and agencies on the organization and operation of the Central Steering Committee for Institutional and Legal Improvement and the Central Steering Committee for Judicial Reform.
Also attending were Politburo members: Standing Secretary of the Secretariat Tran Cam Tu; Secretary of the Party Central Committee, Head of the Central Internal Affairs Commission Le Minh Tri; members of the Party Central Committee, leaders of a number of ministries, departments, branches, and central agencies.
According to VNA, after listening to the report and opinions, speaking at the working session, General Secretary and President To Lam emphasized that perfecting the legal system and judicial reform have an organic relationship, closely linked, and there needs to be a focal point to ensure that the stages of law-making, law enforcement organization and judicial reform are a unified, synchronous, interconnected, and effective entity.
The consolidation of the 2 Steering Committees is necessary, reducing focal points but not reducing tasks, clear responsibility, clear products and clear results.
The name after consolidation is the Central Steering Committee for Institutional Improvement and Law Enforcement; The General Secretary and President is the Head of the Committee.
The General Secretary and President clearly stated that the consolidation is not a mechanical arrangement but in essence a reorganization of the central government's leadership and direction mechanism for the task of building and perfecting the socialist rule-of-law state of Vietnam, in which there are two very important axes: perfecting the legal system and law enforcement.
Improving the legal system is not only legislative technique but also the organization of implementation, control of power, protection of justice, protection of human rights, citizens' rights, creating a stable, transparent, and safe legal environment for development.
General Secretary and President emphasized that the new Steering Committee must be a leadership, direction, coordination, urging, inspection, and strategic supervision institution; not to replace the National Assembly in legislation, not to replace the Government in state management and law enforcement, not to replace competent state agencies; only focus on policies and orientations on strategic issues, major projects, contents to be reported to the Central Government, the Politburo, the Secretariat, coordinate to remove bottlenecks, inter-sectoral issues, inspect, supervise, urge and handle political responsibility according to their authority.
The new Steering Committee needs to review the entire program, plan, conclusions, dossiers, data and tasks being implemented by the two Steering Committees, classify tasks to report to the Politburo and the Secretariat to direct implementation, not to interrupt operations; must develop criteria for evaluating results with specific products.
The General Secretary and President proposed to clearly define the position and functions of the Central Internal Affairs Commission and the Ministry of Justice; at the same time, build regulations on coordination between the Party Committee of the Ministry of Justice and the Central Internal Affairs Commission, it is necessary to specify very specifically, clearly the responsibilities, clearly the tasks of each agency and clearly the coordination mechanism between the two sides; continue to improve the organizational structure of the Steering Committee.
The General Secretary and President requested the new Steering Committee to create substantive changes, expressed through removing major legal bottlenecks, handling inter-sectoral obstacles, improving the quality of law-making, law enforcement efficiency, improving the quality of judicial activities, preventing and combating wrongful convictions, protecting justice, reducing compliance costs, improving the investment and business environment and improving the access to justice of people and businesses.
