South Viet Nam: Two Against Thieu

CAMPAIGNING for South Viet Nam's October elections is not supposed to begin until September. But last week the politicking was under way in earnest. In near-simultaneous attacks, President Nguyen Van Thieu's two chief rivals, feisty Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky and phlegmatic retired Four-Star General Duong Van ("Big") Minh, both charged that the election itself is being shamelessly rigged.

Ky's salvo was fired in the form of an open letter to the President. Announcing a formal break with Thieu--a somewhat superfluous gesture since the two have been coolly ignoring one another for months--Ky blasted the President for miring the country in a "war with no end" and "preferring the flatteries of sycophants to honest counsel." But Ky's main complaint was that Thieu had "an excessive attachment to power" and was already working to put the elections in his pocket by "silencing the opposition and muzzling the press."

Blank Ballots. Thieu, in an open letter of his own, dismissed Ky's charges as merely "part of the Vice President's electoral campaign." Then Big Minh piped up. The popular general agreed that there was "some truth in what Ky says," and went on to blast the U.S. embassy for masterminding the rigging of the election despite its professed hands-off policy. U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, he jeered, "is a great specialist in elections of this type. He succeeded in the Dominican Republic,* he succeeded in Viet Nam in 1967, and he will succeed again in October."

Although Ky has already declared, neither he nor Minh is an official candidate yet. Under a new, Thieu-sponsored election law, ostensibly designed to cut down on the number of frivolous candidates, presidential hopefuls must collect endorsements from 40 of the 190 or so National Assembly members, or from 100 of the country's some 550 provincial councilmen. There were reports that Minh had collected at least 40 signatures from Assembly members by early last week, but was planning to wait until just before the Aug. 4 deadline before declaring his candidacy.

Ky is having much more difficulty rounding up his endorsements because he is going after the provincial councilmen, all of whom are beholden to Thieu-appointed province chiefs. If Ky is shut out of the race, the current Saigon speculation goes, he will throw his support to Minh just before the election. Another possibility is that both Ky and Minh will pull out at the last minute, leaving Thieu a hollow victory.

Thieu is reportedly preparing a counterstrategy. According to the opposition, Thieu-appointed province chiefs have been asked to sign blank nomination ballots. Later on, if a couple of candidates are needed to make the presidential race at least look like a contest, their names could be filled in.

Oblique Endorsement. At the moment, Thieu's most serious rival is Big Minh. The hefty (200 Ibs., almost 6 ft.) ex-general is popular, a Buddhist, a Southerner--and a bit of a question mark. In 1963, after Minh led the generals' coup that toppled the Diem regime, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge wondered in a cable to Washington: "Will he be strong enough to get on top of things?" He was not, and by 1964 he was ousted in another coup and subsequently exiled to Bangkok for nearly four years by a more forceful rival for power, General Nguyen Khanh.

Though a professed antiCommunist, Minh has long tried to present himself as a moderate who could lead a future government of national reconciliation. His prospects--and Ky's, too, perhaps --may well have been strengthened by the stunning announcement of Richard Nixon's planned trip to Peking, which enhances the plausibility of Minh's conciliatory position. Moreover, many observers see in the latest Communist signals in Paris an oblique endorsement of Minh as a man whom both Hanoi and the National Liberation Front would be willing to live with, at least for a while. As yet, Minh is not saying whether he would be willing to live with the N.L.F.--perhaps because it could get him arrested for treason. "It is too early to talk of my program now," Minh told TIME Correspondent Stanley Cloud in an interview in his modern Saigon villa last week. "If I were to say I favor a coalition government, I might find myself in exile in Bangkok again." During his 90-minute talk, Minh made these other points:

THE CAMPAIGN. "The minimum standards for a free and fair election are these: no confiscation of newspapers, no arrests of people who campaign for me or Vice President Ky in the countryside, no switching of ballot boxes when they are collected and transported to the vote-counting center."

U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN THE ELECTION. "Unless

Mr. Bunker says that no American equipment or resources, including planes and helicopters, can be used in the election, the American Government's so-called hands-off policy would, in reality, mean discrimination against me." THE THIEU REGIME. "Many people tell me they think that even under the French we had more freedom than we do now--and we are a people who do not like colonialism. I'm not advocating a return to colonialism, but under the French, people could live on their salaries."

AFTER THE FIGHTING ENDS. "If we want to continue to fight, we will have to have economic, social and political progress as well . . . When the war is over, we will need the aid of the U.S. and other friendly countries. Our resources will be exhausted. Then we will face our greatest problem, and I hope the Americans will help. But whatever aid comes in should not be directed by the Americans. If it is, we would appear as a lackey in the world's eyes." IF THIEU IS REELECTED. "We cannot rule out the possibility of a coup. After all, it happened to me once. Especially if the elections are not free and honest, we should expect trouble. If I were a Communist, I would help President Thieu get re-elected."

* Where Bunker's skillful diplomacy during the crisis of 1965-66 cooled passions and opened the way for the election of a moderate President, Joaquin Balaguer.

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