Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In some of the big corruption cases, many prosecuted government officials testified that they did not ask the companies for money, they only tried to do good job, but companies insisted on giving the officials gifts (usually in the form of an envelop). The officials would tell the companies that they didn’t have to do that, the companies handed the envelops anyway, and the officials received the envelops.

Of course, that is bribe and corruption, because they all knew that those envelops didn’t have love letters inside.

But what bothers me is Vietnam’s culture of gift giving. It is very difficult to distinguish gift from bribe. Say, many parents have said, “If you don’t have good gifts for the teacher once in a while, your children under his care may have bad grades.”

The Vietnamese government’s Decree No. 59/2019/ND-CP, dated July 1, 2019, provides: “Agencies, organizations, units, and people with positions and powers are not allowed to directly or indirectly accept gifts of any kind from agencies, organizations, units, or individuals related to the work they are handling or within the scope of their management.”

In case where a person insists on giving a gift and the government official cannot refuse, he must report that gift to his supervisor to deliver that gift to the government for public use.

The rule is simple: NO GIFT.

No gift means no gift. Even a free lunch is a gift. In Washington, everyone has the good habit of paying for his/her own meal, especially when you are a government official having lunch with a civilian working on something with you.

I think it is very easy to refuse a gift. All you have to tell them is: “I work for the government. No gift.”

In the case of a teacher as in my example above, I don’t know how to handle that. I think giving gift to teacher is a very good way to say thank you. But now, those gifts have become bribes. In deed, the Vietnamese now have gifts constantly to government officials who have power over them, such as local officials, local police. Those gifts, big or small, are within Decree No. 59/2019/ND-CP and are unlawful.

The other side of the problem is the gift giver. When a person insists on giving you a gift, it is extremely hard to say no, especially when the gift is relatively small – a bottle of wine, a box of chocolate, a good lunch, an expensive pen, a jacket, a pair of shoes…

Million-dollar gifts are easy to see. The daily small gifts are really the sustaining power of the corruption culture throughout the country.

I don’t have a solution. Do you?

With compassion,

Hoành

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