A Beginning

"This certainly announces the beginning of the end," exulted South Viet Nam's Premier Nguyen Cao Ky. "A great victory for the people against traitors. A victory for what is right and just against what is cruel. A victory of the entire free world against those who would enslave mankind."

Ky's happy hyperbole was perhaps a bit overheated, but he did have rea son for enthusiasm as South Viet Nam's election results flowed in last week.

So did U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, who greeted him fulsomely as the results became clear. Fully 80.8% of the nation's 5,290,000 registered voters went to the polls--many more than the scant 50% that U.S. observers had cautiously predicted. It was a beginning in the slow, arduous process of building a democracy in a nation racked by war.

In the face of fierce Viet Cong threats, the voters elected 108 members of an assembly that, over the next six months, will forge South Viet Nam's first constitution since the overthrow of the Huong regime two years ago.

Well aware of the danger of ballot stuffing, the government watched the polls closely. Premier Ky stepped in twice to halt ballot rigging by province chiefs, and indeed his own nephew, running for a seat in coastal Vung Tau, was defeated. Clearly, the generals paid heed to the warning of Major General Nguyen Due Thang, who heads the "revolutionary development" (pacification) program, and also was in charge of running the elections. Thang said: "We have to do this right, or we may never have another chance. The people will never believe us again if this is not a free election."

Still, the government was exerting its influence to ensure a heavy vote: most of the South Vietnamese army was withdrawn from combat and sent to supervise the vote. Vietnamese villagers were led to believe that if they did not vote, they might incur the wrath of district and provincial officials; government pressure was at least as powerful as Communist threats. Said one observer: "There was a general feeling that if they didn't vote, it would hurt them later." It would, but in more subtle ways than government reprisals.

A Banana for Dessert. The new as sembly will scarcely be dominated by military types; of 55 uniformed candidates, only 20 were elected. Of the remaining assemblymen, 34 are Buddhists (though none is a known representative of the militant Vien Hoa Dao group that tried to overthrow the government last spring), and fully 30 are Catholics, who make up only 10% of the population. That was enough to end the 100-day fast of militant Buddhist Leader Thich Tri Quang. From his quarters in a Saigon maternity clinic, Tri Quang promptly labeled the election a fraud. Then he ate a banana.

South Viet Nam's minorities were also well represented: ten members of the Hoa Hao sect were elected, as were seven Confucionists, five Cao Dai, and nine Montagnards. On a regional basis, the winners were evenly divided between the north and the south. "It's going to be quite a debating society," said one-American, recalling the old Saigon saying: "Get four Vietnamese together and you have five political opinions." A few common threads run through the mix: most of the candidates favor a strong executive rather than government by parliament; they want a constitution that guarantees freedom from arbitrary arrest and freedom of speech; all members are vehemently nationalist and antiCommunist. Some of the more prominent facces: >Dr. Dang Van Sung, 51, a physician turned editor of Saigon's influential daily Chinh Luan ("The Right Opinion"), who is popular among intellectuals and the Hoa Hao, and could probably be elected assembly chairman if he chose. "He may turn out to be the strong minority opposition leader," says one observer.

>Phan Khac Suu, 61, the white-haired former Chief of State whose recalci trance brought down the last civilian government, ex-Premier Phan Huy Quat's "Medicine Cabinet" of 1965. A southerner with strong support in the populous Mekong Delta, Suu advocates a system of checks and balances between executive, legislature and a national Supreme Court.

>Tran Van Van, 58, a gaunt intriguer who is one of Viet Nam's wealthiest businessmen (Saigon real estate, Delta rice lands), is also an ally of Phan Khac Suu and was imprisoned by the Diem and Khanh regimes. Van is the potential leader of a 44-seat southern bloc in the new assembly.

> Dr. Phan Quang Dan, 48, another physician (he runs a clinic in Gia Dinh) and a favorite of Americans. Dan cam paigned for free trade unionism, free enterprise and a guaranteed minimum wage, urged meaningful land reform and an unrestrained legal opposition to any civilian government.

Korean Model? Buoyed by the election results, the Ky government and U.S. officials in Saigon wasted no time in getting the good word out to the countryside. Posters, pamphlets and leaflets began rolling by the millions through U.S.-installed presses. Nor will North Viet Nam be overlooked in the satura tion attack: fully 5,000,000 leaflets will float down on the North from U.S. planes this week with the message: "The September elections prove that the masses in the South prefer freedom to Communism."

To decide the ultimate structure of that freedom is the task of the assemblymen, who will gather on Sept. 26 in the shabby National Cultural Center in downtown Saigon (it will get a fresh coat of paint before then). The biggest question is by what formula the military and civilians can share power in a nation at war--a country in which the military is the only strong, cohesive force.

The generals are intrigued by the South Korean model, in which military leaders shed their epaulettes and formed a coalition with leading civilians. To that end, the Saigon junta recently sent two representatives to Seoul, where they studied the system of President Chung Hee Park. Actually, the group elected last week could become a new National Legislative Assembly--but only if it meets with approval of the generals, who can exercise a veto on any actions that carry less than a two-thirds majority. "There's no doubt about it," says one Western official. "The military are a force, a potent force. They're always going to be around."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.