A Cease-Fire in Dueling Little Saigon Tet Parades

Tet celebrations in Little Saigon have regularly been marred by political infighting and controversy over the event’s 19-year history. This year was no different, with not only multiple festivals, but two parades planned to mark the Vietnamese new year.

But the prospect of two competing Tet parades marching down Bolsa Avenue on the same weekend--an event that would have publicly exposed rifts in the Vietnamese American community--was narrowly averted this week after one group of organizers formally bowed out.

“It was dividing the community,” said Dancharles Maka’ena, an organizer with the Tet Parade Foundation. “We couldn’t let that continue.”

During its long history in Westminster, the celebration of Tet has become synonymous with community conflict. Some battles have been over politics, others over personalities and power.

“Every year there’s been fighting. No one group ever has the strength to win, but it’s enough to paralyze the community,” said Yen Do, editor of Westminster-based Nguoi Viet, the largest Vietnamese-language daily newspaper in the country.

Maka’ena was one of the founders of the group that has organized the Vietnamese New Year’s parade since 1997, but a bitter split among members in the last year resulted in the formation of two groups vying to hold the parade this February.

The two groups had planned to hold parades on Feb. 20 and 21, tying up Little Saigon’s main business thoroughfare for two days. Ironically, the reason the Tet Parade started two years ago was because the City Council had canceled the 17-year-old Tet Festival, held along a blocked-off Bolsa Avenue, because merchants had complained that the three-day event disrupted business.

The Tet Parade Foundation’s decision to pull out this year, announced during a Westminster City Council meeting on Tuesday, raises a white flag amid the internal fights, but no one is predicting immediate peace. Maka’ena said his group is already beginning to plan next year’s parade.

“I can’t say any more except I’m sorry our city and our City Council has been burdened with having been put between the proverbial rock and a hard place,” Maka’ena told council members. “I assure you that will never happen again.”

Maka’ena asked the council to draft an ordinance to allow only one Tet parade next year to avoid the rift that occurred this year.

Meanwhile, leaders of the remaining parade, scheduled for Feb. 20, were jubilant.

“I’m happy they decided to quit. Now the community can put all its effort into making this parade a good one,” said Lac Tan Nguyen, vice chairman of the Little Saigon Tet Parade ’99.

Both groups say the split occurred after Joey Gioi Nguyen, one of the five original members of the Little Saigon Cultural Arts Assn., parted ways with the other four members over community politics.

In previous years, parade organizers had worked with the Vietnamese Community of Southern California, a prominent community organization that sponsored its own Tet festival. But during a contentious election last year, that community group itself was split into two competing factions.

Joey Gioi Nguyen had wanted to work with the faction headed by Thang Ngoc Tran, calling it the only legitimate group. The other parade organizers refused to side with either group, so Nguyen broke off with them and created his own parade association. Because he had applied for the original city permit, Joey Gioi Nguyen was able to keep the original name, leaving the other four members fuming.

Over the last few months neither parade group was willing to compromise, despite attempts at mediation by Westminster Mayor Frank Fry. Plans for two Tet parades were well underway despite community concerns that it would further divide Little Saigon.

“We got a lot of calls in the last four to five weeks wanting us to combine the two groups,” said Peter Nguyen, president of the Tet Parade Foundation. However, that was impossible since the other group “kept bashing our name on radio and the newspapers. They call us Communists and liars. We don’t want to fight back at their level,” Peter Nguyen said.

But members of Joey Gioi Nguyen’s group say their adversaries were spreading misinformation and simply refused to compromise.

“We tried so many times to resolve the differences. They tried to set conditions for working together. That’s not right. We can’t accept that,” Lac Tan Nguyen said.

In the end, Maka’ena said, his group chose to withdraw for the sake of the entire Vietnamese American community. Like the famous decision by biblical King Solomon, “How could we chop the baby in half to give to each mother? We just decided to give that baby life, and if the community wants to nourish it, so be it,” he said.