[Vnbiz] Corruption-fighting Vietnamese granny gets award Mon Jan 21, 8:34 PM ET

Tue Jan 22 08:47:28 PST 2008

Way to go, granny.  Did the government or the party recognize this 
corruption fighter?  If not, why not?  HPP

"Tai Phan" <k.phan007 at gmail.com> 
Sent by: vnbiz-bounces at mail.saigon.com
01/22/2008 09:58 AM
Please respond to
vnbiz at vietlinks.net

To
vnbiz at vietlinks.net
cc

Subject
[Vnbiz] Corruption-fighting Vietnamese granny gets award Mon Jan 21, 8:34 
PM ET

[ Vietnam Business Forum ]

Corruption-fighting Vietnamese granny gets award 
Mon Jan 21, 8:34 PM ET 
BERLIN (AFP) - A Vietnamese grandmother whose 25-year battle against 
corruption has made her the target of death threats received a prestigious 
award from Transparency International on Monday. 

Le Hien Duc has shown "personal strength and courage... to break the 
corruption cycle", said Transparency's Chair Huguette Labelle at a 
ceremony in the German capital.
The 75-year-old retired primary school teacher spends her days in Hanoi 
working through a stack of complaints from Vietnamese people who have been 
asked to pay bribes by local officials, policemen and companies. 
She sends petitions to the authorities in the search for justice, 
sometimes harrying officials with repeated phone calls in a one-woman 
campaign financed by her monthly pension of about 70 dollars.
"This award is a great honour for me and for those affected by corruption, 
many of whom have contacted me for sympathy and help," Duc said after 
accepting the Integrity Award, given to individuals who have made an 
outstanding contribution to the fight against graft. 
"I am not powerful, I am just a retired teacher who has dedicated her 
whole life to the fight against corruption."
Her stance has made her many enemies, but Duc brushes off the numerous 
death threats she has received.
"People are always threatening to knock me down with a motorbike or a car 
but I am not afraid," she told journalists before the prize-giving 
ceremony.
"An official from the United Nations Development Programme has tried to 
persuade me to have a bodyguard, but I have turned down the offer. 
"I am old but I can look after myself. My only fear is that if I am killed 
the work I have been doing will stop.
"If we do not fight corruption, the poor will suffer most."
Vietnam ranks 123rd most corrupt out of 179 nations in Transparency 
International's annual Corruption Perceptions Index, a closely watched 
survey of business people and experts that lists Denmark as the 'cleanest' 
and Somalia as the worst.
The other winner of this year's Transparency award was Mark Pieth, a Swiss 
criminal law professor credited with playing a leading role in securing 
international implementation of the Anti-Bribery Convention drawn up by 
the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 
think-tank 
Cobus de Swardt, Transparency's Managing Director, said the Convention was 
"widely regarded as the gold standard for monitoring mechanisms" and had 
"helped to stem the supply side of corruption". 
Under Pieth's leadership, the OECD body that monitors corruption in 
business "has the courage to criticise even the most powerful, including 
the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan," de Swardt said.
_______________________________________________
To subscribe/unsubscribe, please contact admins at
vnbizadmin at vietlinks.net
Info at http://mail.saigon.com/mailman/listinfo/vnbiz
Archive at 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vnbiz/
or http://groups-beta.google.com/group/VNBIZforum/
or http://mail.saigon.com/pipermail/vnbiz

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x98dbc20>/pipermail/vnbiz/attachments/20080122/fa7605f8/attachment-0001.html 