This autumn is no longer the same

The 2025 institutional revolution carries historic significance, representing a strategic step of the Party and regarded as the third “national landscape reorganization”. Eighty years after our people regained power, under the leadership of the Party, the entire Party, armed forces, and people have overcome countless hardships and challenges, achieving tremendous accomplishments across all aspects of social life. These affirm Vietnam’s role, position, and prestige on the international arena, rising strongly in line with the assertion of the late Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong: “Our country has never had the fortune, potential, position, and international prestige as it does today”.

As the nation turns a new page, feelings of changes are clearly reflected in the joyful faces of people nationwide, sweeping away all of their concerns about regions and work positions, welcoming a new surge of vitality into every corner of social life, dispelling many inadequacies in organization, psychology, and human mindset.

Few could have imagined that in such a short time, the country would transform from 63 provinces and cities to only 34; with a complete abolition of the district level, including 696 districts, towns, and provincially-run cities; while more than 10,500 communes, wards, and townlets were consolidated into just 3,321 communes, wards, and special zones. Restructuring and streamlining have been implemented from central ministries and sectors down to the grassroots. Components and forces in the entire society now stand in disciplined formation, solemn and united, marching forward with the people. This is truly a revolution with swift, decisive, and effective steps, meeting the aspirations of the people.

This autumn is different. Its difference lies not in the revolutionary essence of the people’s government, but in its forms, names, and methods of implementation in response to new requirements. The most noticeable changes are, for example, the names of hometowns, communes, wards, townlets, and cities where people have been living in, yet they now are bearing new names. In the past, directives from the central level had to pass through many intermediate tiers, and multiple steps, requiring great effort and time, but sometimes never reached where they were needed. Now, they go straight to the grassroots, directly to the people. The grassroots are where officials live side by side with the people to serve them; in any places with inefficient officials and civil servants who lack credibility, they will quickly be eliminated.

Previously, some worked in a city or province but now must move tens or even hundreds of kilometers away to pursue their work daily. Previously, they held positions as officials or civil servants at the district or city level, but now they serve as officials or civil servants at the ward or commune level. In the past, their work coverage was small, the nature, functions, duties, and requirements of quality of work were at lower levels and standards. Now, they have been elevated to a new height, with a heavier workload and higher demand for quality. Accordingly, benefits, entitlements, and preferential policies have also changed, increasing in line with competence and qualifications.

We are living in the historic autumn days of the August Revolution, deeply sensing the transformations of our homeland and country. The great emotions of the era are always present in every soul, stirred by the changes in life and the shifting developments of social life. A vast space for creativity is opening, and our hearts and souls cannot help but beat in unison, cannot help but rejoice with the changes and the aspirations of the entire nation to rise up amid the great undertaking of "reordering the nation’s landscape".

Eighty years after the successful August Revolution, and nearly forty years after the success of the renewal process, we are now in a historic period of advancing reform to a higher level, demanded by the revolutionary cause and the realities of nation-building in the new era. Under the vast cultural space of our homeland’s sky, we have a tremendous opportunity to immerse ourselves in the fresh flow of emotions, to create and develop in the era of the nation’s rise. Whenever the values of one’s homeland become deeply ingrained in our blood, they ignite a powerful source of emotion, opening up countless opportunities in each specific task daily to generate higher values on the heroic revolutionary land.

By: Nguyen Minh Duc
Translated by: Dang Huyen - Thu Ha