General Secretary To Lam delivers closing speech at the 12th Central Conference

Thanh Nien Newspaper respectfully introduces the full text of General Secretary To Lam's speech:

Dear Central Committee members,

Dear delegates attending the conference.

After two days of urgent, serious, democratic and highly responsible work, the 12th Conference of the 13th Party Central Committee has completed the entire agenda. The Conference discussed, gave profound and comprehensive opinions and reached high consensus on three key groups of content with strategic significance, long-term orientation, directly serving the preparation of the 14th Party Congress and promoting the process of continuing innovation and sustainable development of the country in the new period.

On behalf of the Politburo and the Secretariat, I would like to sincerely thank the Central Committee members and delegates attending the conference for their high sense of responsibility and their sincere, frank and profound contributions to the contents of the conference. I would like to thank the Central Office and relevant units for their excellent service to this conference. Here, I would like to summarize the important results of the conference and identify major tasks and solutions that need to be implemented immediately after the conference.

General Secretary To Lam

PHOTO: VNA

I. On the orientation of the documents submitted to the 14th National Party Congress

With the spirit of revolutionary attack and the spirit of continued innovation, the Central Committee decided to integrate the contents of three documents including the Political Report, the Socio-Economic Report, and the Party Building Summary Report into a Political Report in a consistent, unified, and synchronous manner to be submitted to the 14th National Party Congress. The Central Executive Committee requested that the new Political Report be completed in the direction of: (1) Ensuring inheritance and innovation, accurately reflecting the country's development practices, especially the outstanding achievements in politics, economy, culture, society, national defense, security, foreign affairs... with the view that we have the foundation, potential, position, and international prestige as we have today thanks to the crystallization of thousands of years of civilization of the Nation, especially the achievements of 95 years under the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam, 80 years of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, 40 years of renovation and the great contributions and sacrifices of many generations of Party members, of the masses; (2) Clearly defining the goals of the 14th Congress term and the vision to 2045, 2050 and beyond, associated with 2 goals: 100 years under the leadership of the Party, 100 years of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam; (3) Emphasizing new development drivers, including science and technology, innovation, digital transformation, development of high-quality human resources, and effectively exploiting the advantages of deep international integration; (4) Affirming the key role of Party building and rectification, anti-corruption, waste, and negativity; combating individualism, group interests, ideological, moral, and lifestyle degradation; strengthening control over power; improving the Party's leadership, governance, and fighting capacity; improving the capacity for national governance and operation of the apparatus in the political system; (5) The Central Executive Committee assigned the Politburo and the Secretariat to continue directing the Sub-committees preparing for the 14th National Congress to complete the Documents, continue to organize extensive consultation within the Party and the whole society, ensuring quality, consensus, and strategic stature; (6) Reports summarizing the implementation of the Party's Charter; The Summary Report on 40 Years of Innovation also needs to be further improved in the above spirit to truly become the foundation for maintaining solidarity and unity within the entire Party and the foundation for planning future national development strategies.

II. On the content of amending and supplementing a number of Resolutions and conclusions of the Central Committee to create a political basis for the goal of continuing to reform and innovate the country.

The Central Committee has reviewed and given instructions on summarizing practices, assessing difficulties and shortcomings in a number of current laws and institutions, thereby orienting amendments to remove legal bottlenecks and promote development in the new period. Research and develop laws in the following direction: Legal provisions must be fundamentally stable and have long-term value; laws regulating development creation only regulate framework issues and issues of principle under the authority of the National Assembly, while practical issues that frequently change are assigned to the Government, Ministries, Branches and Localities to regulate to ensure flexibility and suitability with practice. Continue to innovate and perfect the structure of the national legal system according to the new development model. Assign the Politburo to base on the Central Committee's comments to direct conclusions on amending, supplementing and perfecting the contents of the Resolutions submitted for comments at this conference.

In the land sector , the focus is on perfecting the legal framework on land ownership, planning and use, ensuring transparency, fairness, efficiency and harmony of interests between the State, people and enterprises. It is necessary to emphasize that land is a special national resource, an important resource for national development, an important input factor for investment in socio-economic development; land management and use must ensure the common interests of all people; strive to complete the construction of a national database and information system on land that is centralized, unified, synchronous, multi-purpose and interconnected; land use planning is established at the national and local levels; priority is given to allocating land funds for the development of a synchronous infrastructure system, industry, services, and urban development; and maximize the efficiency of land use.

For the planning sector : it is necessary to remove overlaps between sectoral, regional and local planning; propose appropriate solutions to create a basis for the implementation of harmonious and mutually supportive spatial planning, creating dynamism between national, regional and local planning; adjusting the national master plan for the 2021-2030 period, with a vision to 2050, is necessary and urgent; adjusting the national planning must ensure consistency with the country's socio-economic development strategy, with major policies and guidelines of the Party and State, and with the orientation of organizing socio-economic space after administrative unit rearrangement.

In the field of education and training , the Central Executive Committee requires strengthening the comprehensive leadership of Party committees, promoting the role and responsibility of heads of educational and training institutions; the State plays a leading role in ensuring resources for investment and development of education and training; at the same time, promoting socialization, maximizing the attraction of social resources for the development of education and training; not using the level of financial autonomy as a basis for determining the level of autonomy for public educational and training institutions.

The Central Executive Committee affirmed: Institutional reform is a breakthrough, a key driving force to promote rapid and sustainable development. Therefore, it is required that all levels and sectors (i) Proactively review, propose amendments and supplements to legal documents that are still inadequate and contradictory; (ii) Build a synchronous, unified, transparent and feasible legal system, create a favorable investment and business environment, ensure the legitimate rights of the people; (iii) Promote the application of technology in state management, transforming from a management administrative model to a service administrative model.

The 12th Central Conference closed after 2 working days.

PHOTO: VNA

III. On the direction of personnel work for the 14th Party Congress

In the recent past, despite having to focus highly on leading and directing the completion of a huge amount of work on streamlining the organizational apparatus and promptly advising on the arrangement of leadership staff of agencies and units at the Central and local levels, the Politburo has directed the Personnel Subcommittee to study and fully absorb the opinions of the Central Committee at the 11th Conference to complete the draft of the Personnel Work Orientation of the 14th Party Central Committee; at the same time, develop an orientation for allocating the structure and number of official Party Central Committee members to localities, agencies and units, and submit it to the 12th Central Conference for consideration according to regulations. These contents, after discussion, were basically agreed upon and highly agreed upon by the Central Committee.

The Central Committee unanimously stated: (1) The direction of personnel work for the 14th National Party Congress is a particularly important document, deciding the entire work of preparing and electing personnel for the Party Central Committee, the Politburo, the Secretariat, the General Secretary and key leadership positions of the State, contributing to the success of the 14th National Party Congress; continuing to enhance the position and more clearly affirm the Party's comprehensive, absolute and direct leadership role over the country, especially when we are directing the strong, synchronous and comprehensive implementation of the revolution of streamlining and streamlining the apparatus from the Central to the grassroots level to enter the era of prosperous development of the nation; (2) Personnel work is the "key of the key"; therefore, personnel preparation for the 14th National Party Congress must be carried out in a synchronous, scientific, methodical, strict, democratic, objective and transparent manner; ensure proper implementation of Party regulations, the principle of democratic centralism and legal provisions; (3) The work of preparing personnel for the Party Central Committee, the Politburo and the Secretariat must comply with and maintain the Party's basic viewpoints and principles; must put national and ethnic interests first and foremost; handle harmoniously and reasonably between standards and structure; between inheritance, stability and innovation and development; between universality and specificity; between training expertise and strengths, practical capacity; between prestige, work experience and development direction; in which, especially promoting the quality, efficiency, work products, and dedication of cadres as a measure in evaluating, arranging and using cadres; ensuring appropriateness in structure, age, gender, ethnicity and region; (4) The introduction and selection of personnel must be based on the prescribed standards and conditions, generally based on the planning but not too rigidly, but must be based on specific practices for consideration, not omitting factors outside the planning but with outstanding leadership qualities and capacities, best meeting the requirements of the tasks of the revolution in the new period; at the same time, closely linked with the plan for arranging personnel to take on key leadership positions of central and local departments, ministries, branches, agencies and units for the 2026-2031 term and the Vietnam Fatherland Front, socio-political organizations for the next term, (5) Resolutely not to let "slip through" those who do not meet the standards and conditions, and are not worthy to participate in the 14th Party Central Committee; At the same time, there must be effective solutions and measures to limit and promptly overcome the situation where personnel who have just been elected to the Party Central Committee or have just been planned and appointed have to be reviewed, disciplined or prosecuted for criminal liability; (6) Regarding the orientation of allocating the structure and number of official Party Central Committee members of the 14th tenure to localities, agencies and units, the Central Committee agrees, has high consensus and believes that the orientation of allocation has been prepared relatively carefully, closely, has inheritance, is close to the practical situation and is convincing; at the same time, it is closely linked to the requirements of leadership in carrying out political tasks and building a team of high-ranking Party leaders in the immediate future as well as in the new development stage of the country.

Regarding the Party Congresses at all levels , the Central Executive Committee determined: The Party Congresses at all levels for the 2025-2030 term are of special importance. This is not only a large-scale political activity for the entire Party and people, but also a premise for the successful organization of the 14th National Congress of the Party. Currently, agencies and organizations in the political system following the 2-level local administrative unit model have come into operation. Party committees and organizations at all levels need to focus on leading and directing the successful organization of Party Congresses at all levels according to the roadmap: Grassroots-level congresses to be completed before July 31, 2025, Congresses directly above the grassroots level and Party Committees of Communes, Wards, and Special Zones to be completed before August 31, 2025; Provincial Party Congresses and Central Party Congresses must be completed before October 31, 2025. At the same time, Party Committees are required to focus on thoroughly discussing tasks and solutions during the preparation and organization of the congresses to continue contributing to the completion of the documents of the 14th National Party Congress and the documents of their own congresses; demonstrating innovation and revolution in leadership, direction and implementation.

The Central Committee requested the Central Organizing Committee, provincial and municipal Party Committees, and affiliated Party Committees to urgently implement plans to organize congresses at all levels, promptly handle arising problems, and avoid being passive, delayed, or allowing internal disunity to occur.

Regarding personnel work , the Central Committee highly agreed on the following requirements: (1) Uphold the principle of the Party's unified leadership of personnel work, implement the correct procedures, be objective, transparent, democratic but serious, and avoid unhealthy lobbying; (2) Build a contingent of cadres at all levels. In addition to the policy of paying attention to training strategic-level cadres, special attention must be paid to building a strong grassroots cadre team capable of completing tasks well, selecting cadres who meet the standards of political qualities, ethics, practical capacity, innovative thinking, dare to think, dare to do, dare to take responsibility, be attached to the people, and have a development vision to put them in key positions.

The Central Executive Committee decided to take disciplinary action by removing comrades Nguyen Xuan Phuc, Vo Van Thuong, Vuong Dinh Hue, and Le Minh Khai from all Party positions; expelling comrade Nguyen Thi Kim Tien from the Party; and agreeing to let comrade Do Duc Duy cease to hold the position of member of the 13th Party Central Executive Committee and comrade Vo Chi Cong cease to hold the position of alternate member of the 13th Party Central Executive Committee.

IV. On the operation of the two-level local government model

The conference acknowledged the initial report on the implementation of the two-level local government model in 34 provinces and cities, with 3,321 communes, wards and special zones, with the space reorganized in the direction of supplementing, supporting and creating endogenous motivation for each province, each region and nationwide.

Preliminary results after 19 days of implementation show that: (1) The basic apparatus operates well, without major problems, civil servants have initially adapted; (2) The work processing process is relatively smooth, public services are resolved faster; (3) People express their agreement and expect the new model to be more effective. However, the Central Committee also noted: (i) It is necessary to continue to perfect guiding regulations, build interconnected business processes; (ii) Timely adjust shortcomings in the assignment and decentralization of tasks; (iii) Improve the quality of retraining and fostering of cadres, especially at the commune level; (iv) Strengthen monitoring, inspection, and periodic assessment of the operational effectiveness of the model.

The Central Committee assigned the Government Party Committee, Party Committees of Central Party Agencies; Party Committees of the Fatherland Front and Central mass organizations, Party Committees of provinces and cities to continue to closely monitor the situation, conduct a comprehensive review after 6 months to propose adjustments suitable to reality.

V. Some key tasks after the Conference

To effectively implement the conclusions of the 12th Central Conference, I request that Party committees, Party organizations and the entire political system focus on performing well the following key tasks:

1. Organize to thoroughly disseminate the conclusions of the 12th Central Conference, ensuring that each cadre and party member understands correctly, implements correctly, and has high consensus.

2. Speed up the completion of draft documents, solicit public opinions, promote collective intelligence, and complete them in a concise, easy-to-understand, visionary, and strategic manner.

3. Urgently review and propose amendments to laws to promote innovation and development, remove barriers, and ensure the interests of people and businesses.

4. Deploy preparations for Party Congresses at all levels in a methodical, thoughtful, democratic, procedural, and strict manner, especially in terms of documents and personnel.

5. Continue to perfect the two-level government model, while improving the quality of staff, service spirit, and effectiveness of public administration.

6. Organize well the activities to celebrate the 80th anniversary of National Day (September 2, 1945 - September 2, 2025) and major national holidays, creating a vibrant competitive atmosphere, a joyful atmosphere, trust and pride for the entire Party, people and army throughout the country. Complete the goal of defending the Fatherland, developing the country and improving all aspects of people's lives.

Dear comrades,

The 12th Central Conference marked an important step in the preparation process for the 14th National Congress of the Party. The results of the Conference clearly demonstrated the spirit of innovative thinking, decisive action, solidarity - democracy - discipline - creativity - development.

We are facing new opportunities but also many challenges. The world and regional situation continues to change in a complex manner, with both opportunities and challenges intertwined. This requires the entire Party, people and army to maintain their faith and aspirations for development, and to be determined to continue comprehensive innovation to build a peaceful, developed, powerful, prosperous and happy Vietnam.

In that spirit, I declare the 12th Central Conference, 13th tenure, closed.

Wish you good health and success in your assigned tasks.

Thank you very much.