Building a culture of integrity - Lang Son Electronic Newspaper

Integrity is a very broad category, belonging to the field of ideological consciousness, ethics, and the "human" part of each person. The meaning of integrity is also studied and discussed from many perspectives, and is concretized in each different profession. However, the nature of integrity is as President Ho Chi Minh explained: Integrity is clean, not greedy; Righteousness is not evil, is straightforward, and upright.

The purpose of integrityeducation is to build each citizen into a clean and upright person; integrity becomes the living and working culture of the whole society. From ancient times to the present, not only the East but also the West has paid great attention to integrity education, although the "definition" of integrity may not be the same. Up to now, integrity education is still a topical issue.

In Vietnam, right after gaining power, despite being busy with work, at the first meeting of the Provisional Government on September 3, 1945, President Ho Chi Minh Identifying integrity education as one of the six urgent tasks. Since then, our Party and State have issued many policies and regulations to educate integrity for cadres, party members and the people.

The 13th Party Congress document clearly states: "Persistently educate and train cadres, party members, civil servants and public employees on integrity, build a culture of thrift, and avoid corruption and waste."

Recently, the Politburo issued Regulation No. 144-QD/TW, dated May 9, 2024 on "Revolutionary ethical standards of cadres and party members in the new period".

Why have we been worried about the risk of moral degradation and integrity among officials and party members? The issue has become even more urgent since recently, many officials and party members, including high-ranking officials, have been involved in corruption and negativity, and have been disciplined and criminally prosecuted.

Many opinions say that the mechanism, policies and laws are not complete, not consistent and not tight. In fact, the mechanism is not at fault; after a comprehensive review of more than 1,000 legal documents and other related documents in various fields, only 6% of them have loopholes and inadequacies.

Many people also believe that it is due to objective, negative impacts of the market economy mechanism; but market economy exists in most countries in the world, while in Vietnam it is a socialist-oriented market economy.

The problem lies in many other aspects. We have discussed and defined relatively clear ethical standards in general and integrity and uprightness in particular, but how to achieve those standards is not yet strong and clear.

To form ethics, and even more so, a culture of integrity and honesty in each cadre, party member and citizen, "mostly comes from education". However, through the summary, only for anti-corruption education, it shows that there is still a situation where the content, form and duration of teaching are "not really suitable" for both teachers and learners.

Along with education is the tightening of discipline, order, and resolute handling according to the law for serious violations of integrity and honesty. However, ethics is an ideological and spiritual field, which cannot be formed by using only hard power but requires a harmonious combination of soft power, first of all the example of the leader.

Should we need a strategy on integrity education to implement, suitable from school, family to society, from each party organization, agency, unit, from childhood and throughout the process of adulthood. In which, integrity education for cadres and party members is the core, creating a spread throughout society.

Besides, integrity also needs to be nurtured by guaranteed conditions, such as: economic development, regimes, policies, salaries, social environment, etc.

The most important thing is the self-awareness to cultivate and practice integrity and uprightness of each individual, to always remember the prohibitions, keep the limits, be a clean person, work honestly, respect integrity, no matter the circumstances, not be greedy for material things or power, and feel ashamed when oneself and loved ones violate.

Measures to build integrity and honesty must have a focus, key points, and appropriate roadmap, but cannot be done one thing before moving on to another, but must have a certain synchronization.

The journey to build a culture of integrity and uprightness is not simple, and cannot be done in one go; it requires great determination, because it is not only the lifestyle and behavior of each person, but also the soul of the nation, an indicator of the quality of development and soft power of the country.

Source: https://baolangson.vn/xay-dung-van-hoa-liem-chinh-5018929.html