At 8
a.m of August 08, 2008
Dear Jury (Panel),
I,
lawyer Le Tran Luat, who am approved by the People’s Supreme Court to defend Mr.
Pham Ba Hai, the activist for democracy.
The
reason I don’t call Mr. Pham Ba Hai the defendant but the activist for
democracy is that I do believe that his actions which have just been accused by
the first instance level are not guilty if not mean that they will bring lots
of good results for the evolution of democracy in Vietnam that a democratic
society is the desire of the people of Vietnam and the essence, the goal of the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
Dear Jury,
First
of all, I, together with the Procuracy to elucidate:
1. What is to oppose the Socialist
Republic of Vietnam?
I
would begin to advocate for Mr. Pham Ba Hai by debate against the Procuracyon
the legal concept of “the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” and the so-called “against
the Socialist Republic of Vietnam”. I would repeat that I want to have a debate
on this concept from the legal point of view. I cannot find any guidelines of
the Supreme Court as well as the Congress interpreting legal term, “against the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam”, which is expressed with what specific acts and
what its content of expression? Needing to remind that one of the factors/elementsthat
constitutes crime is the object or known as infringed legal relations. So the
Procurary must point outspecifically what social relation or group of social
relations Mr. Pham Ba Hai’s actions have infringed according to the Article 88.
Dear Jury,
To further
justify Mr. Pham Ba Hai’s actions, I find it necessary to raise how the legal
concept of “the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” should be understood thoroughly.
The
August 1945 Revolution abolished feudalism, terminating permanently the
structure of “hereditary succession” to build a democratic state in which power belongs to the people through the electoral
mechanism, setting criteria of democracy, equality, justice, civilization, comfortable
life as goal. With such criteria and aim, the Vietnamese revolutionary leaders
were determined to follow the line of thought of the Marxist-Leninist to build
a state known as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. So, first of all, the
concept of the socialist state, in general, and the Socialist Republic of
Vietnam, in particular, is a system of thought.
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