Vietnamese think tank folds

       Vietnam's first independent policy think tank, which brought together former government advisers and reformminded scholars, has decided to close in the face of a state directive that would have sharply curtailed its activities.
       That ends a two-year run during which the pioneering Institute for Development Studies (IDS) tested the communist government's tolerance of opposing views on economic and social policy, and analysts say it signals that space for public discourse is being squeezed ahead of a major party meeting.
       "We are not happy at all," said IDS president and founding member Nguyen Quang A."We are very sad and it took a lot of consideration to make a very hard decision."
       IDS's board decided on Monday to dissolve the Hanoi-based think tank, a day before a directive from Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung known as "Decision 97" was to take effect.
       Dung's decision, promulgated on July 24, set out a tight list of areas of research approved for private organisations, which did not include macroeconomics, and outlawed the public airing of opinions by private groups that ran counter to the party.
       Views "opposing the line, objectives and policies of the party and state must be sent to the relevant authorities within the party or state and may not be announced publicly," it stated.
       Many in Vietnam have voiced opposition to Decision 97, and IDS quietly lobbied the government to reverse the decision, without success.
       The group had argued Decision 97 itself was illegal and that banning opposition views would have "unforeseeable consequences."
       "The act of banning open opposition is unscientific, unprogressive and undemocratic," it said in a statement.
       IDS members and others have speculated that Decision 97 was designed specifically to kill the think tank, the only one of its kind in Vietnam.
       Its research had taken aim at issues like rural development policy and had been sharply critical of the government's approach towards state-owned enterprises. Analysts and IDS members said many in the Party were opposed to the group's existence.
       IDS had faced periodic pressure to close over the course of its two-year existence.
       More broadly, Decision 97 and the demise of IDS signalled that "the appetite for constructive criticism has virtually disappeared" in the run-up to the 11th Communist Party Congress scheduled for early 2011, said a Vietnam-based Western scholar.
       He said the arrests, detentions and other steps to put pressure on bloggers,online commentators and newspapers in recent weeks were part of the same effort to silence dissent before the Congress, at which many top leaders will be replaced or reshuffled.