The send-off ceremony and rehearsal of security and public order assurance plans for the 14th National Party Congress held on January 10 in Hà Nội. VNA/VNS Photo

HÀ NỘI – In the period leading up to and during the 14th National Party Congress, hostile forces are exerting all efforts and employing every possible tactic in an attempt to poison personnel affairs and undermine the Party’s unity.

While personnel work is the most critical task, especially at the Party Congress, unity becomes the very lifeblood of the Party – a matter of survival, the heart of the Vietnamese revolution.

By smearing the Congress’s personnel arrangements, hostile forces are not merely seeking to damage the reputations of specific officials. Their primary and ultimate objective is to shake unity within the ranks of Party members and leaders, fracture the Party’s internal cohesion and weaken the close-knit bond between the Party, the armed forces and the people.

Through the dissemination of fake news and half-truths regarding personnel placements ahead of the congress, those unwilling to accept the country’s development are pursuing a dual-purpose strategy: creating confusion, sowing doubt and fostering negative sentiment around personnel issues, while attempting to open rifts within the Party itself.

Stoking sentiment among separate community groups based on the regional origins of officials included in the congress’s planning pool is an old tactic, one that has largely lost its effectiveness. At present, those seeking to disrupt and undermine the congress are adopting a new trend, spreading smokescreens to manipulate the emotions of certain groups, drawing so-called inspiration from the professional backgrounds of senior Party and State personnel.

Trend, in the parlance of netizens, refers to a prevailing online fad. This particular fad pits one sector against another, elevates the influence of officials from one field while denigrating the reputation of leaders from another profession and so on.

These days, hostile forces are mobilising all their resources in an attempt to cast a shadow over the flesh-and-blood relationship between what have been described as the two arms of the people, of the Party, of the Government and of the proletarian state.

At a ceremony marking the establishment of the Armed Public Security Force (now the Border Guard Command) on March 3, 1959, President Hồ Chí Minh used remarkably simple yet profoundly meaningful words, two arms, to refer to the Việt Nam People’s Army and the People’s Public Security Force.

Hostile elements are now seeking to weaken these two arms of the Party, in the hope that the left arm will drift away from the right.

In terms of their respective functions, the army safeguards the Fatherland, while the Public Security force maintains public order and protects the political system and the people. These two pivotal forces work in close coordination with each other and, together with the entire Party and the whole population, strive towards the shared goal of ensuring a peaceful nation.

The Party’s policy related to national defence and security is clearly identified in the Resolution of the 13th National Party Congress: “To firmly safeguard national independence, sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity; to protect the Party, the State, the people, the socialist regime, national culture and national interests; to maintain a peaceful environment, political stability, national security and human security; and to build an orderly, disciplined, safe and healthy society for national development along the socialist orientation.”

One key component of the overarching task of political stability, as set out in the 13th Congress’s documents, is ensuring the success of the 14th National Party Congress and creating a calm, secure environment for the Congress to select the most outstanding representatives from among more than five million Party members to key positions in the Party apparatus for the 2026–2030 term.

It is telling that among the official slogans for the 14th congress is the phrase: “Solidarity – Democracy – Discipline – Breakthrough – Development!” Democracy, discipline, breakthrough and development are all vital and indispensable objectives. Yet solidarity is placed first.

Accordingly, attention to the upcoming congress and to the Party’s personnel work must go hand in hand with the responsibility to safeguard unity within the Party. The most basic and practical expression of that responsibility is to refrain from spreading malicious content or unverified rumours on social media. – VNA/VNS