Last Saturday, the National Assembly’s Standing Committee turned down the resignation submitted by its member Dang Thi Hoang Yen, who is facing the removal of her NA membership for dishonesty shown in her record details.

Dang Thi Hoang Yen speaks at a NA meeting

Yen, a deputy of southern Long An Provice, submitted her resignation last Friday, one day before the Committee voted to cross her out of the list of NA deputies.

The vote was conducted at a meeting that Yen did not attend despite the committee’s request for her attendance.

Concerning her absence, Yen explained that she had lodged her resignation and had reported to the head of the NA’s Committee for Deputies’ Affairs, Nguyen Thi Nuong, that “her attendance was not necessary.”

Explaining the Committee’s rejection of Yen’s resignation, a senior official of the NA Committee for Deputies’ Affairs said, “Article 56 of the Law of Organization of the National Assembly states that “those National Assembly deputies who are no longer worthy of the people’s trust shall be removed from office by the National Assembly or the voters, depending on the seriousness of their errors.

“The National Assembly Standing Committee shall decide on bringing the case of removal from office of National Assembly deputies before the National Assembly or voters in localities where such deputies were elected at the proposals of the Vietnam Fatherland Front Central Committee, the provincial/municipal Fatherland Front Committees or of voters in localities where such deputies were elected.

“In cases where the National Assembly removes deputies from office, the removal from office must be approved by at least two-thirds of the total number of National Assembly deputies.
“In cases where voters remove National Assembly deputies from office, the removal shall be carried out according to the procedures prescribed by the National Assembly Standing Committee.”

As such, the Law does not include a concept of “resignation” and moreover, the “NA deputy” title is not a post appointed by the NA, so Yen’s resignation cannot be acceptable.

After the meeting, chairman of the NA Office, Nguyen Hanh Phuc, said the removal of Yen as a NA deputy will certainly be included in the agenda of the NA’s third session that will start on May 21, 2012.

It is expected that Yen’s removal will be decided on May 26.

The process of removal will be conducted based on the Law of Organization of the National Assembly, Phuc said.

Accordingly, Yen will be removed from the NA only when at least two-thirds of the total 500 NA deputies vote to remove her membership.

As previously reported, on April 18 the Central Committee of the Vietnam Fatherland Front (VFF) voted to propose that the National Assembly delete deputy Dang Thi Hoang Yen from the list of NA members for the dishonesty shown in her record details.

Yen, 53, who is also chairwoman of the Tan Tao Group, Tan Duc Investment and Industry Joint Stock Company, and Tan Tao University, was once admitted into the Communist Party of Vietnam in District 5, but she did not declare this in her profile as a candidate for the NA election in May 2011, the VFF said.

In addition, she declared in her profile that her husband was Nguyen Tri Hai, who died in 1989, and did not mention her current husband, Jimmy Tran, from whom she sought a divorce by filing a petition to the Long An Province's People's Court in July 2010. She recently withdrew the petition after the court’s verdict on the divorce case was cancelled by the Supreme People’s Court.

On July 5, 2010, while the divorce case was being handled, Jimmy, 57, left Vietnam for the US. On September 16, the Ministry of Public Security prosecuted Jimmy for “abusing trust to appropriate assets” when he was general director of Vietnam Urban Development Joint Stock Company (Vietnam Land), located in the Tan Duc Industrial park in Long An Province.