A Thousand to One

In the sweltering, 100DEG heat of dusty Vientiane, Foreign Minister Khampan Panya blandly told reporters. "Sometimes the truth appears to be untrue." The deceptive "truth": the incredible majorities run up by the pro-government candidates of the National Front in last week's general election for a new Assembly.

In Samneua province, long a stronghold of the Communist rebels, the National Front candidate rolled up 16,000 votes to 13 for his pro-Red opponent. Another National Front office seeker was given a total of 18,189 votes while his two rivals respectively got eleven and four. Of course, the National Front candidates had certain advantages: anti-government districts had been gerrymandered to make their election easier, and proCommunists had been allowed to run only at the last minute, and were limited to nine candidates.

Though weak at the polls, and with the Communist Deputies from the last Assembly still in jail on charges of sedition, the Reds made their presence felt. A government district worker and a militiaman were ambushed and slain. A band of 60 Communists broke into a rest house north of the capital and stabbed to death Paul Emile Chabert. a Frenchman serving as an education specialist for UNESCO. Later, the Red leader of the band apologized to the murdered man's widow. He had mistakenly thought Chabert was an American, he explained.

Since nothing has ever been simple or clear-cut in Laos, the 59 newly elected Deputies are apt to spend weeks in horse-trading and jockeying for position before electing a Prime Minister. The two parties making up the National Front--the conservative Rally of the Laos People and the army-backed Committee for the Defense of the National Interest--have already subdivided themselves in backing three different candidates for the office. But the country's general policy is preordained since, thanks to the landslide, the new Assembly contains not a single opponent of the government.

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