Still a Thieu-Way Race in South Viet Nam

THERE was always something fundamentally unworkable about the script for South Viet Nam's presidential elections in October. Authored in part by U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, the plan called for an earnestly contested race among three candidates--President Nguyen Van Thieu, Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky and retired four-star General Duong Van ("Big") Minh. If Thieu won a reasonably honest election, the scenario went, the Administration could declare Vietnamization a resounding success and step up the pace of its withdrawal from the longest war in U.S. history.

Given the mix of personal ambitions and animosities in Saigon, that plot was always less likely to unfold according to plan than to unravel. Last week, in a drama that "needed only Gilbert and Sullivan to set it to music," as one Western diplomat in Saigon cracked unhappily, the show nearly collapsed altogether.

The popular Big Minh, Thieu's only real rival for the presidency, abruptly pulled out of the campaign, charging that the election was a "disgusting farce" blatantly rigged by the Presidential Palace. The only other potential rival, Ky, had already been shut out--at least "provisionally"--by a highly restrictive election law. Then, after a palace showdown between Bunker and Thieu following Big Minh's withdrawal, the nine justices of South Viet Nam's Supreme Court met and ruled that Ky could qualify as a candidate after all. Ostensibly, what had started as a three-man campaign and then come down to one was now to become a two-way race again.

Or was it? The Supreme Court action put Ky on the ballot whether he intended to run or not. But at week's end, Ky announced that he would defer a final decision. Nevertheless, it was understood that he intended to call for a three-month postponement of the election. He was also expected to propose that both he and Thieu resign, and that Nguyen Van Huyen, president of the Senate, become Acting President in order to organize a new election. For the moment, only one thing seemed certain: despite all the maneuvering to restore the appearance of a real race, the election still bore little resemblance to the "self-determination" that Washington politicians talk of when they explain why the U.S. is still in Viet Nam.

Bad Old Days. Even if Ky were to throw all his energies into a campaign, such a race could only have a grotesquely one-sided result. Ky's support is mainly among the military, northern Catholic refugees, and some Buddhists, plus whatever votes he might pick up from Minh's anti-Thieu supporters. Deprived of any chance of unseating Thieu by political means, South Viet Nam's voters could well turn to other methods. Last week, a crippled war veteran doused himself with gasoline and set himself ablaze on a downtown street to protest Ky's earlier provisional exclusion from the campaign; he might not have done so had he waited for the Supreme Court ruling.

The electoral debacle pointed up the U.S.'s declining leverage in Saigon. The U.S. embassy in Saigon badly underestimated what Ky acidly describes as Thieu's "excessive attachment to power"--a syndrome that is not unknown to Ky and Minh, who have both held power with U.S. backing in the past. The flaw in the U.S. thinking was that no one foresaw how far Thieu was willing to go to ensure his own reelection.

Thieu's principal weapon was a tough election law that he rammed through the National Assembly last June. The law required potential candidates to collect written endorsements from at least 40 of the 191 National Assemblymen or from at least 100 of the country's 550 provincial councilmen. Thieu blandly assured U.S. officials that the law was aimed merely at winnowing out the frivolous candidates; after all, there were no fewer than eleven hopefuls in the 1967 election, which Thieu won with a bare 35% of the vote. When it finally dawned that the man Thieu most wanted to winnow out was Ky, alarm spread through the U.S. embassy. Bunker repeatedly warned Thieu that it might look bad all round if the Vice President were squeezed out of the race. But when the Aug. 4 filing deadline came around, Thieu sat quietly while the Supreme Court ruled out Ky for lack of sufficient certified endorsements.

Big Minh was the only remaining potential opponent, and when he began to speak of withdrawing, U.S. disappointment over Ky's disqualification turned into dismay. Minh had won a wide following as a patriot and nationalist and was sensitive to charges that he was in the race mainly because the U.S. put him up to it. Unless the U.S. did something to curb Thieu's immense advantages in the campaign, Minh warned Bunker, he would pull out.

The measure of U.S. concern was evident when Bunker hastened to Washington for several days of talks. It was decided that Bunker should warn Thieu "on the highest authority"--meaning straight from Richard Nixon--that the Administration would be deeply disturbed if the election turned into a fiasco. Congress, Bunker was to emphasize, might balk at continuing aid to Saigon if Thieu ran unopposed.

Bunker returned to Saigon last week and delivered his message to Thieu, then went on to Big Minh's villa a few blocks away. But Minh was not convinced of Bunker's power to put a rein on Thieu's ambition. Next morning, Minh's spokesmen announced his withdrawal.

They also released government documents which, according to Minh's supporters, showed how the election was being rigged. The main item was a 17-page memo to province chiefs; among other things, it told how to fix ballot cards to enable Thieu partisans to vote twice and how to discourage Thieu opponents by finding "a scar"--Vietnamese parlance for a past crime or anything else that might make a man vulnerable to blackmail.

Supreme Irony. After that, Bunker returned to Thieu's palace, this time with Kansas Senator Robert Dole, the chairman of Richard Nixon's Republican National Committee. A little pressure was evidently needed to convince Thieu that something had to be done. Next morning, the Supreme Court ruled that Ky had enough valid endorsements to qualify as a candidate after all.

The supreme irony of the situation is that the U.S. has been serious about the "hands-off" posture it struck toward the election months ago. But as Big Minh and other critics have bitterly pointed out, what the U.S. took to be a policy of noninterference in the campaign President Thieu chose to interpret as a green light to make the most of his advantages as the incumbent.

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