Even in that last election, 57% of the voting age population voted

That was actually better than most countries.

The big picture is that the Vietnamese dictatorship did exactly the wrong thing. Creating a billionaire class proves that they ditched socialism. But they kept the dictatorship. They should have instead entrenched socialism and become a democracy. That would have been a very interesting thing to see. That they did exactly the wrong thing proves that North Vietnam’s entire reason for fighting the war was a farce.