The People's Procuracy of Vietnam- A special agency in the law system.

The People’s Procuracy of Vietnam might be not quite a familiar agency to you, however, this department has been playing such a vital role in Vietnamese Judiciary for a long time up to now. 

What are the duties of the People’s Procuracy? Basically, it has two separate duties. First of all, which I believe to be the main accountability of this department is to make prosecution. In terms of this duty only, the Procuracy has no differences from the Department of Prosecution, which is quite a popular mechanism in other countries. However, what makes the Procuracy not the Prosecution comes from the second duty of it. The People’s Procuracy is given the rights to inspect and monitor the whole judiciary in general. To be more detailed, every actions of the Court, Organizations of Investigation or other agencies in the judicial system is under the eyes of The Procuracy. This duty, in particular, is to make sure that there should be no actions violating the procedures of litigation. To be easier to understand, it could be likely defined as an inspector who works for the National Assembly in order to inspect the practice of constitution and law throughout the judicial system.

In a court of civil cases or criminal cases, procurator is the person whose role is only behind the role of judges. Like two sides of a con, this mechanism has benefits as well as side effects. It is widely acknowledged that with the presence of the procurators, the procedure of litigation would be less likely to be violated. As a result, the statutory rights of litigators or defendants would be best protected. However, it is worth mentioning what could be the side effects of this agency. As a matter of fact, when an agency is given a wide range of power, it could dominate the others and the case of the Procuracy is not the exception. In fact, the effect of the procurators is sometimes more considerable than that of the judges.

Moreover, this mechanism has lowered the role of a lawyer. In some other countries, especially in the criminal cases, the procedural status of a lawyer and a prosecutor must be equal. Only if this happened, the statutory rights of defendants could be protected and the judgment of the Court would be more precise. It is claimed that one of the main explanation to the fact that lawyer in Vietnam is not highly rated is about the domination of the People’s Procuracy in a Court.

Many legal experts in Vietnam suggested that the Procuracy should be divided separately into 2 Departments. One department should play the role as the department of prosecution only and other will take the responsibility as a judicial inspection agency. Other experts come up with the idea of keeping only the prosecution duty and the inspection one should be eliminated. The government is looking at both views with the consideration of both benefits and drawbacks of each view.

In general, I believe that there would be a noticeable change in the structure of the People’s Procuracy in the near future.