Vietnamese go to the polls

The candidates are all cleared by the Communist Party

Polling booths have opened across Vietnam to elect members of the country's National Assembly.

Vietnam is a one-party state and the Communist Party oversees the selection of candidates.

But this year it has allowed 16 independents onto the final list of more than 700 candidates, from which 500 will be chosen.

However, all candidates must accept the party's constitutional monopoly of power.

Challenging the party's "leading role" remains an imprisonable offence for which dissidents are still periodically detained.

One party

At 16.5%, the proportion of non-party candidates was a slight increase on the outgoing 450-seat National Assembly elected in 1997.

But deputy speaker Mai Thuc Luan said it was no time for any fledgling opposition party to get excited.

"Vietnam is a one-party country. We are not a multi-party country," he said.

Since the mid-1980s, the communist authorities have gradually abandoned the planned economy, and last year launched a three-year programme of structural reforms supported by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Ho's anniversary lends a patriotic flavour to election day

But political liberalisation remains anathema to a regime which watched the collapse of its eastern bloc sponsors with horror.

Those few European politicians who have dared to raise the issue of multi-party democracy with top officials here have all been politely rebuffed.

A BBC correspondent in Hanoi says that one of the biggest issues in the campaign has been corruption.

Three Communist Party officials have been disqualified, one of them linked to a major underworld figure, Nam Cam, who is in jail on murder charges.

This year's vote is taking place on the birth date of the founder of modern Vietnam, the late Ho Chi Minh.