Toward Riceroots Democracy

"The laws of the emperor yield to the customs of the village," says a venerable Vietnamese proverb, reflecting the ancient importance and autonomy of the unit in which 80% of South Viet Nam's 16 million people live. Well aware that the proverb carries more importance than ever in the struggle with the Viet Cong to win the countryside, the Saigon government this week launched Viet Nam's most meaningful and democratic village and hamlet elections in modern times. Throughout Viet Nam, thousands of peasants entered polling booths built of bamboo matting and black cloth to elect their own local officials, dropping their voting cards into boxes adorned with yellow and red stripes of the South Vietnamese flag.

Together with last week's official promulgation of the country's new constitution by the military directory, the village and hamlet elections mark the first, riceroots step in a march toward democracy that will be paced over the next six months. The local balloting will run through the summer, then national elections for President and an upper house of representatives will be held on Sept. 1. On Oct. 1, the return to civilian rule will be completed with elections for representatives to a lower house. For a nation at war, the polling process itself is a daring, even dangerous, vote of confidence in the future.

Feudal Loyalty. In the first phase of local elections, 1,004 villages will elect councils of six to twelve members, with the candidate receiving the largest vote becoming chairman of the village. The councils will restore a large measure of long-lost self-rule to the villagers, since they will be empowered to make decisions in some 15 different spheres, ranging from taxation to school construction. They will be able to spend up to $425 on their own; larger sums must be discussed with province chiefs or Saigon. As the next step, 4,487 hamlets (subdivisions of villages) will elect hamlet chiefs--the traditional and revered headmen of Vietnamese rural life.

Modest though such prerogatives may seem to outsiders, they constitute a vital return to ancient custom for the rural Vietnamese, whose whole harsh span of years may well be lived out within a ten-mile radius of his village birthplace. The conquering Chinese in 207 B.C. first organized the Vietnamese into close-knit villages, with a council of elders and a headman who was priest, welfare worker and justice of the peace all in one. When the Chinese were thrown out, the forms remained and took root in an almost feudal system of loyalty to locality. But with the coming of the French in the 19th century, village autonomy was gradually undercut, and in 1954 President Diem eliminated it altogether, placing village government under officials appointed in Saigon.

Terror Campaign. Since rural Vietnamese, like most rural folk everywhere, tend to be hostile to all big-city folk anyway, such repression of local expression for years provided the Viet Cong with a potent rallying cry. Until now, the successor governments to Diem in Saigon have done little about it. It is clear from the Communists' frantic response that they consider the local elections a major threat. They have begun a country-wide campaign to intimidate candidates and voters alike. Already they have killed two council candidates (one was gunned down last week only ten miles from Saigon) and kidnaped another, have also murdered a hamlet chief, a deputy chief and two other hamlet officials.

Even the North Vietnamese are apprehensive about the elections. In a transparent move, Hanoi recently announced that it would stage its own village and hamlet elections this month.

Saigon has attempted to minimize the risks as much as possible. The first phase of local elections will be held only in secure, government-controlled areas--with a total population of 5,000,000. The definition of security varies, however, and in some hamlets there are more candidates than police or militia to protect them. A second phase, bringing elections to areas as they are pacified, aims at another 600,000 people in 258 villages and 1,100 hamlets by Oct. 1. All candidates for the 15,000 local posts available must meet 13 requirements before a Saigon-appointed board, the most important of which bars Communists and proCommunists from running.

Groundswell of Discontent. In the end, more than half of South Viet Nam's citizenry in the countryside will be unable to vote because they live in Viet Cong-dominated areas beyond Saigon's emerging rule of law. Since self-rule at the village and hamlet level is so much part and parcel of the Vietnamese way of life, both Saigon and Washington hope that the example of the next few months will have its effect in Communist areas by creating a groundswell of discontent directed against the Viet Cong, in envy of the newly restored and visible perquisites in Saigon-controlled areas. If the elections work that way--and it is admittedly a big if--they could shape Viet Nam's future more effectively than a host of regiments.

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