Residents of a town in Central Vietnam are asking why their local government wants to dip into its meager annual budget to spend US $3.5 million to demolish and rebuild a 19-year-old monument.
Authorities in Dien Ban town are seeking Quang Nam province’s permission to tear down the two-decade-old military monument and replace it with a larger and grander tribute to Vietnam’s military.
One expert told Radio Free Asia the job would provide a perfect cover for corruption, with local officials and construction firms working in tandem to inflate the project budget and pocket the difference.
The “upgrade” to the Dien Ngoc Gallant Soldiers Monument would cost 88 billion dong, or about US $3.5 million, according to a proposal made public by Vietnamese state media. The reportedly dilapidated current statue was built in 2005 for only 1.5 billion dong, or about $60,000.
That has left some locals with severe sticker shock.
“Demolishing the current Dien Ngoc Monument and using 88 billion dong to rebuild and upgrade it is a waste and too costly. It won’t bring much spiritual value,” said a local construction worker, who spoke with RFA on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from officials.
He suggested that the provincial government should reject the proposal so that the funds can instead be used to provide loans for the town’s residents to help them overcome the financial difficulties they have faced since the COVID pandemic routed local businesses.
According to state media, the current statue, though rarely visited by local residents, was built to commemorate “the sacrifice of seven Dien Ngoc gallant soldiers in the battle against the American imperialists and their henchmen” in the local area in the early 1960s.
Neverending development
RFA Vietnamese’s calls to the Dien Ban People’s Committee to seek further information about the project went unanswered.
But the proposal argues that a complete rebuild of the monument is needed because the 2005 monument is in a state of disrepair. The requested funds, it says, would also help upgrade gardens near the monument.
The Dien Ngoc Gallant Soldiers Monument is only the latest of a growing number of monuments around Vietnam that local authorities have sought to rebuild, seemingly for propaganda purposes.
Many in Vietnam suspect another motive, though.
A lecturer at the Hanoi University of Civil Engineering told RFA, also on the condition of being granted anonymity, that many monuments were being rebuilt to provide officials an easy way to embezzle state funds.
“It’s not really understandable that cities and provinces that are as poor as church mice, and whose residents are constantly hungry, insist on building monuments,” the lecturer said, adding that costly monuments could prove “seductive” due to the possibility of kickbacks.
“That seductive and magic force, to put it bluntly, is personal gain,” they explained. “Money from project funds will be stolen and then go straight into the pockets of officials and their cronies.”
Out of every 10 dong spent on a given project, the lecturer said, only about two or three dong would ultimately be spent on the project.
“That’s why,” they said, “nine out of 10 monuments quickly deteriorate.”
And that only opens up opportunities for more future rebuilds.
A monument to corruption
Vietnamese state media has not shied away from reporting on the issue, noting that many multi-billion-dong monuments have been left in a ruinous state only years after being unveiled in ceremonies.
Some of the most high-profile flops have included the Phan Dinh Phung Monument in Ha Tinh province in the country’s north, which cost about 30 billion dong, or about US $1.2 million, and the “Uncle Ho and Vietnamese Farmers” monument in nearby Thai Binh province, which took 203 billion dong, or about US $8 million, out of state coffers.
Some government officials have even been imprisoned for embezzlement of state funds for their monumental ploys.
A high-profile example was the Dien Bien Phu Victory Monument, which was inaugurated on May 7, 2004, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Dien Bien Phu victory against the French.
Not long after its completion, the monument base cracked and began to sink, while the bronze statue atop the base rusted away due to the low proportion of bronze used. Original designs had called for 220 tons of bronze, but only 120 tons reportedly ended up in the statue.
Eight people were arrested and prosecuted for the graft scheme, including the deputy director of Dien Bien Phu’s department of culture and the director of its historical site management board. In 2011, the provincial court sentenced the latter to more than 3 years in prison.
Still, an architect in Hanoi said the real money for officials was not in the monuments game. Speaking to RFA on condition of anonymity, he said infrastructure projects such as roads and bridges cost significantly more than monuments and so left more room for “kickback money.”
But in smaller areas of Vietnam without the imminent need for such large-scale projects, he said, monuments with a conspicuous political element were the most sure-fire way for local officials to profit.
Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Alex Willemyns.