AT THE weekend a court in Ho Chi Minh City fined a mischievous drunk for causing public disorder while under the influence of alcohol. Pham Van Binh, a 43-year-old cycle-rickshaw puller, had climbed the bronze statue of General Tran Nguyen Han, a 15th-century warrior who fought Chinese occupation (pictured to the right).

He had waved at the crowd and sat on the General’s hand, stretching his criminal performance to a good 15 minutes, while as police tried their best to coax him down. They even laid out an air-mattress, in case he fell. He jumped, eventually.

Whether it was a protest or simply the antics of a wayward drunk, no one among the crowd of hundreds who watched from the nearby Banh Thanh market could be entirely sure.

The way that his arrest was reported in the official press was perhaps even more unusual, given that his shenanigans had occurred at a sensitive time. Vietnamese officials tend to abhor the slightest hint of any protest or social disorder, and particularly around prominent sites. Such incidents normally go unreported by the state-run press, even when staged in front of a vast audience.

Read more: http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2012/10/vietnams-leadership