The state-controlled media reported that on the morning of November 27, Vietnam’s highest legislative body National Assembly (NA) members voted to pass the Identification Law, with 431/468 votes in favor, accounting for 87.25% of the total number of National Assembly deputies. Thus, the National Assembly has officially passed the Identity Law including 7 chapters and 46 articles.
Accordingly, the new Identification Law will take effect from July 1, 2024, at which time, “Citizen Identification Card” will be changed to “Identification Card.” Notably, a progressive point to note is that the Identification Law allows people of Vietnamese origin whose nationality is “undetermined” to be granted an Identification Card.
According to Le Tan Toi, chairman of the NA’s National Defense and Security Committee, “renaming ‘Citizen Identification Card’ to ‘Identification Card’ is consistent with the trend of digital society management; helps make state management more scientific, serving the Government’s digital transformation, digital economy, and digital society.”
A representative of the Ministry of Public Security explained that the name change is intended to “be consistent with the names of citizen identification cards in the world.”
Public opinion sees that the National Assembly’s official adoption of the Identification Law has made a large number of people breathe a sigh of relief. Because for a long time, there have been many opinions in public opinion that this is the way of doing business of the police force, drawing this today, drawing another tomorrow to earn money to share, causing costs for the people and society.
Specifically, the Ministry of Public Security has issued many policies that are considered to take people’s money for profit, such as: changing license plates, changing identification documents… Not to mention, recently, the Ministry of Public Security has proposed that indefinite driving licenses issued before July 1, 2012, must be changed to new driving licenses according to the roadmap prescribed by the Government, etc.
This is the 6th form of “ID card” that Vietnamese people have had to change over and over in the past 10 years. It is worth mentioning that only in March 2023, after forcing people to change to “Citizen Identification Cards” with chips, the Ministry of Public Security forced people to change to “Citizen Identification Cards” with “modified” chip, which they say has “superiority.”
The state-controlled media revealed that to date there have been nearly 80 million “Citizen Identification Cards” with chips, issued to people by the Ministry of Public Security. Experts calculate that when buying plastic card blanks to print documents such as IDs, Driver’s Licenses, etc., if only the difference in the purchase price is VND1,000 /card, the Ministry of Public Security will receive up to a difference of up to VND80 billion, then multiply it several times with all kinds of other documents.
Does this have anything to do with the information posted on the Viet Tan party’s Fanpage, accordingly, author Hanh Nhan reported:
“A source said that the party making the software and providing plastic blanks is the nephew of the Minister of Public Security. In recent years, people’s taxes have poured in VND3 trillion every year. This is also partly because the head of the Communist Party needed a guillotine, so he allows to give the Minister of Public Security so many rights. Until now, the party chief who started the furnace only hopes that the next person will not have such privileges.”
Thoibao.de does not have the conditions to verify this information.
Public opinion has found that, for a long time, the Ministry of Public Security has repeatedly changed personal document forms. We don’t see any benefits yet, we only see people being forced to run back and forth with cumbersome administrative procedures.
Up to now, after the National Assembly has passed the Identification Law, no one is sure that the interest groups of the Ministry of Public Security will run out of opportunities to make money.
As a reminder, for a long time, on social networks there have been comments directly criticizing the Ministry of Public Security, as well as Minister To Lam, saying:
“In the France’s colonization period, they were so evil so that people had to serve two forces. During this time, they always called it heaven and humanity, but people have to serve thousands forces. The Ministry of Public Security under To Lam continuously proposed policies to pickpocket the people. Nine out of 10 policies were against the people’s will and to execute them. Within ten years, they changed my ID form six times. It is true that servants betray their masters.”
It is known that in South Vietnam before 1975, under the Republic of Vietnam regime, people used “Identification Cards” in life and activities. Yet, nearly 50 years later, the “intellectual pinnacles” brought the whole country around, from “Identification Card” to “Citizen Identification Card“… finally changed to… “Identification Card.”
Journalist Huynh Ngoc Chenh, former editor-in-chief of Thanh Nien newspaper, sarcastically said: “A historical turning point, a great revolutionary work that took nearly half a century to complete: Identification cards have returned to the “Identification Card.”
Thoibao.de (Translated)
