GARDEN GROVE – Nearly a month after Councilwoman Dina Nguyen surprised the audience at a council meeting by addressing them in Vietnamese, some residents told her they were still waiting for an apology.
Charles Mitchell called the address “a five-minute tirade.” Josh McIntosh said many in the community were still angry about it. And Tony Flores asked that next time she bring along an interpreter.
“It was kind of awkward for those who only speak English,” Flores told her at this week’s council meeting. “We felt alienated.”
Nguyen responded at the end of the meeting.
“I’m sorry if anyone was offended,” she said. “But it’s a decision that I don’t regret, and I think it was necessary.”
“It’s all about communication.”
Nguyen said that sometimes there’s a need to communicate in a different language. She cited the city as an example: It sends out water bills in English, Spanish and Vietnamese because the community is split into the three language groups.
Nguyen said it was the first time in her years working as an attorney or councilwoman that she was criticized for speaking in Vietnamese. Her Vietnamese comments at the Dec. 11 meeting were the third time that she addressed the public in her native language at a council meeting, she said.
At that meeting, the chamber was overflowing with Vietnamese American residents. Many were there to support Planning Commissioner Phat Bui, who sought the council’s appointment to a vacant council seat. A number of Vietnamese American newspapers and television stations also were there, in part to record the swearing in of new Councilman Chris Phan.
Nguyen did not support Bui. She supported Kris Beard, an appointed councilman who had lost his seat during re-election. The council re-appointed Beard to his old seat.
But before the vote, Nguyen made her statement to the Vietnamese Americans in the crowd and for those who would later see or read it in Vietnamese American newspapers and television programs.
This week, Nguyen recalled that council session and described it this way: “At that meeting, I spoke about the person I want to nominate.”
She said she did not refer to anyone by name.
“The person I wanted to talk about was the qualified person, and that was Mr. Kris Beard … I was speaking about my criteria,” she said. “Before I could even take my next breath to translate into Vietnamese, just like all the other times I’ve done that, a heckler in the audience interrupted rudely before I could even translate it.”
Nguyen said residents have thanked her for speaking in Vietnamese and “explaining the criteria that I used in making my recommendation.”
The meeting can be viewed on the city’s website. Here is what happened: Nguyen said she would make a couple of comments in English and say “a few words” in Vietnamese for those who don’t speak English.
In English, she thanked those who applied for the vacant seat, said it was a tough choice and added that not everyone in the city “will have the same view.” Her comments in English lasted about 30 seconds.
Then she spoke in Vietnamese for close to five minutes. When she finished, Toby Rubin, president of the city’s largest neighborhood group, stood up and asked to speak. Mayor Bruce Broadwater told her: “No, You had your chance.”
Rubin said: “Well. I didn’t know that Mrs. Nguyen was going to do what she just did, which I think is the rudest thing you possibly could have done. We’re in America now. Who is going to translate what you just said?”
Nguyen offered to translate.
In her translation, she said she would be recommending someone for the vacant seat who had time for city business, who did not promote casinos in Garden Grove or be welcoming of any leaders from Communist Vietnam. She elaborated on her points, but did not name any one person.
Immediately after her translation, Bui — the planning commissioner who applied for the vacant council seat — also asked to be heard. He said Nguyen was “planting a smear campaign against my character.” The mayor turned him down.
The councilwoman indicated this week that she doesn’t plan to back down from speaking in Vietnamese again if she feels it is necessary.
“The one thing I do regret,” she said, “is the next time when there is a big issue like that, I probably will speak Spanish as well.”
Contact the writer: 714-796-7829 or rkopetman@ocregister.com
