Leadership Quote by Nong Duc Manh

A politician promising fewer secrets is never just offering transparency; he’s staking a claim over who gets to define the truth. Nong Duc Manh’s line, “We don’t want to keep secrets anymore,” reads like a moral clearing of the throat, but its real power is strategic: it borrows the language of confession to reframe control as openness. The phrasing is notably collective and desire-based. “We” dissolves individual accountability into institutional will, while “don’t want” softens what could be a hard admission into something like an ethical preference. It implies restraint rather than compulsion, as if secrecy were a bad habit the state is choosing to quit.

The subtext is a negotiation with a public that already suspects concealment. By acknowledging “secrets” outright, the speaker validates that suspicion without naming specific failures. It’s a neat rhetorical two-step: concede the vibe, avoid the evidence. In a one-party system like Vietnam’s, where information has historically been managed as a tool of stability, “no more secrets” is less a policy than a permission structure. It tells citizens and international observers: we’re modernizing, we’re accountable, we’re safe to invest in and engage with. At the same time, it quietly sets boundaries: the state will decide which “secrets” count as outdated and which remain rebranded as national security.

The intent, then, isn’t radical openness. It’s legitimacy-building in an era when secrecy stops looking like strength and starts looking like fragility.