Yes, both the copy on the MMC card, and the copy in /etc/openvpn.

Strangely, the files on the mmc card are owned by "user", but they are in the "root" group. The permission bits are 644. I logged in as root and tried to "chown root:users *", but got operation not permitted. I suppose that's not the problem, because the files on the mmc chip are readable by all.

The files in /etc/openvpn are owned by root:users, and have permission bits 640. So there is no reason why the applet would have trouble accessing the files.