Asia-Pacific, Civil Society, Headlines, North America

VIETNAM: Scant Interest in US Elections

Helen Clark

HANOI, Nov 4 2008 (IPS) - While the US Presidential election has gripped the world, there is little interest in this city where Republican candidate John McCain spent over five years as a prisoner of war.

Among the post-war generation, interest, if any, seems focused on Obama.

"I like Obama… I like the way he’s talking about things," Nguyen Duy Quang, a magazine designer, told IPS. "McCain joined the war in Vietnam and Obama was against it," he adds, displaying enthusiasm but ignorance (Obama would have been 13 when the war ended) about his chosen candidate.

"Hillary Clinton!" yelled a student, when quizzed as to her favoured candidate. Clinton’s husband, former U.S. president Bill Clinton, was the first U.S. head of state to visit Vietnam. That was in 2000, but affection for him lingers.

Despite Obama’s popularity with the educated post-war generation there is support for McCain among the older generation, thanks to his work pushing for normalisation of relations between the nations in the early 1990s.

The 2000 Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) helped the emerging nation’s economy expand rapidly but overall interest in the elections is low. "We have too many problems. Everywhere is flooding, that’s what’s important… Not an election in a country far away," Quang said, referring to the city’s recent floods, the worst in decades.

"The Vietnamese always stay away from political issues, even the elections here (party candidates are elected to the legislative body the National Assembly via local elections) they don’t care," Long, a web journalist, said. Coverage in the local press has been relatively low too.

Much has changed in this communist nation since McCain landed in Truc Bach Lake in 1967. With the opening of the economy in 1986, called doi moi, and the 2000 BTA, which kicked the country’s exports into overdrive, Vietnam is increasingly prosperous. Until last year its economy was among the fastest growing in Asia.

Vietnam is also a nation eager to tell everyone that "the war is over". ‘Forgotten’ is the line – both official and unofficial. People are reluctant to talk about it, for the most part.

And if you want a metaphor that combines newfound wealth with a post-war mentality, it’s the city’s nightclubs, not museums, which hold it.

"They drink these when they want to celebrate something; they want something quick and impressive," Cong Anh, owner of the upscale bar, ‘ Funky Buddha’, says. He is referring to his patrons’ fondness for B52 shots – not the bombers that once menaced Hanoi skies but the popular drink made of expensive layers of Kahlua, Baileys and Cointreau which is set on fire.

"They don’t see a connection between that (bombers) and the drink. To them it’s just a name," said manager Vanessa Sykes.

Vietnam’s newfound wealth has meant spending power for the young, many of whom grew up in far more comfortable circumstances than their parents could ever have imagined.

"We like this club because it’s a luxury club, that’s very important," said Thang. Seated with a group of friends around a table holding a one litre bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin, they were enjoying a mid-week drink.

"I’m not interested in politics at all," said another girl, who declined to give her name. None had the slightest interest in the upcoming US election.

These days the area surrounding Truc Bach lake has enjoyed the recent is a coveted address with a large number of popular lakeside cafes, newly opened bars and a well-patronised Indian restaurant. It is here that foreign reporters come, trying to track down someone who may have pulled McCain from the lake.

They are not hard to find. Nguyen Van Cuong, 58, a security officer who’s lived in the area most of his life, said, "I wanted to arrest him too. I jumped in and swam, but someone else got there first."

Cuong knows little about the election, but says optimistically: "I want John McCain to be president because when he was arrested here people saved him from the lake. So John McCain will thank the Vietnamese people."

It has been reported almost gleefully in the foreign press that McCain’s former jailers would vote for him, if only they could. These include party official, Col. Tran Trong Duyet, the former commander of Hoa Lo prison, who has sanction from his superiors to speak with foreign journalists.

And Cuong, would be vote for McCain? He laughs. "In the end I don’t really care about politics."