Westminster Announces Cancellation of Tet Festival

WESTMINSTER —  For the first time in 17 years, there will be no Tet Festival--a cultural celebration of the Lunar New Year--in Little Saigon, the symbolic capital of Vietnamese emigres.

City officials last week canceled the festival just one year after the city became an official sponsor of the cultural event in an effort to promote Little Saigon as a national tourist district. Organizers said they didn’t have time this year to plan the celebration for Tet, which falls on Feb. 7.

Furthermore, the existence of two other planned Tet celebrations by a Vietnamese community agency and a student organization would make it virtually impossible for the city-sponsored one to be a success, said Peter Nguyen, who had been named by Mayor Frank Fry Jr. to head the Tet Festival planning committee.

“So many groups are doing the festivals, and lots of competition just stir up a lot of trouble in our community,” Nguyen said.

Fry said it was best that the activities be canceled now. “If it was going to be smashed, it’s better that it’s smashed before the event than during it,” he said Saturday. “If it’s not going to be first class, it shouldn’t be put up.”

However, the city will hold a street parade recognizing Tet, a time to honor ancestors and celebrate renewal.

The Little Saigon Tet Festival, launched in 1980 by a group of Vietnamese business and community leaders, often has been marred by infighting and bickering among community leaders.

Amid fanfare last year, Westminster officials announced the city was going to be an official sponsor. But local merchants then filed an unsuccessful lawsuit against the city to keep it from holding the festival on Bolsa Avenue, the major thoroughfare of Little Saigon. Discord grew after another festival was held on the same weekend by the Vietnamese Community of Southern California, a Westminster-based community organization. The same group, as well as a student group from Golden West College in Huntington Beach, each plan a festival this year.

This year’s event in Little Saigon had no chance from the beginning, organizers said.

Nguyen blamed the lack of organization on last year’s planning committee, co-chaired by Councilman Tony Lam and then-Mayor Charles V. Smith. Also, he said, potential sponsors were dismayed after last year’s celebration on Bolsa Avenue caused traffic problems and hurt business in the area.

As a result, the City Council, led by Fry, in December voted 3 to 2 to move the festival to a less public location, first to a school and then later to the Civic Center. Nguyen was put in charge of a new planning committee.

Lam and Smith said Saturday that the vote effectively killed the Tet Festival--even before this week’s announcement.

“They killed it at that point,” said Smith, now a county supervisor. “All the planning had been done, the permit drawn, the traffic and transportation concerns addressed--for the festival on Bolsa.”

Smith said officials effectively broke the contract the city had with the Westminster Foundation for the Arts, a private, nonprofit organization that had lined up sponsors and vendors and advertisers.

Lam bowed out of the planning process in protest.

“I’m holding them [the council majority] responsible because they denied the application of the committee to have it on Bolsa,” said Lam. “A city-sponsored festival should be held out in the open, not off the road somewhere.”