The Trials of Ngo Cong Duc

South Viet Nam's presidential campaign overshadowed another important election this week. Vietnamese voters went to the polls to select from among 1,297 candidates the 159 who will sit in the House of Representatives. Patterned after the U.S. House, Viet Nam's lower chamber originates the nation's legislation and, with a two-thirds majority, could override a presidential veto.

Until now, the House has always been pro-government by about a 2-1 margin. The makeup is likely to be much the same after this week's ballots are counted. However, significant antigovernment blocs have begun to coalesce, thus the election promised to be a litmus test of how much support such antigovernment parties could get in the face of overwhelming obstacles.

Government Weapons. Opposition candidates in South Viet Nam must wage uphill battles that would dishearten the most determined American politician. The government not only controls television and radio, but its rigid press laws stifle antigovernment stories in newspapers and discourage favorable stories about opposition candidates. The army provides transportation and other services for government candidates, but none for the challengers.

The candidate who faced probably the worst obstacles in this election was Ngo Cong Duc, 34, a Socialist, Catholic and nationalist, who is also the best-known and most outspoken antigovernment legislator in Viet Nam. To find out what was involved in campaigning against President Thieu, TIME Correspondent Stanley Cloud flew south last week to Duc's home province to follow the candidate on the hustings.

Ngo Cong Duc is far and away the most popular candidate in Vinh Binh, a flat, fertile province in the Mekong Delta, 60 miles southeast of Saigon. Son of a wealthy canton chief who was assassinated by Communists in 1954, Duc has gradually shifted from being a defender of the status quo to being a critic of the war and of the presence of foreign forces. He is now a national personality, and in any fair election would be an odds-on favorite to win. As the campaign came to an end last week, Duc expected to get no more than 20% of the vote.

Bombs, Acid and Fire. Duc's difficulty is that he has been a particularly outspoken opponent of President Thieu, whom he denounces as serving "the interests of war profiteers, the privileged classes and a foreign power [the U.S.]." Soon after entering Congress in 1967, he founded an antigovernment newspaper, Tin Sang (Morning News), which soon became the most controversial journal in Saigon. He traveled to Paris and called for the withdrawal of foreign troops and the establishment of a neutral provisional government in Viet Nam. Since then, he has had nothing but trouble. Duc was labeled a Communist lackey and denied an exit visa for other overseas trips. Tin Sang has twice been bombed, has had its presses drenched with gasoline and acid and set afire, and its editions have been confiscated 150 times; the latest two crackdowns came only last week. Beyond all that,Duc's house in Vinh Binh was broken into and set afire, and his pie-`a-terre in Saigon bombed.

Demolition. During the election campaign, his posters were torn down and his workers harassed. Duc himself has been pelted with stones and rotten eggs. In this campaign's most flagrant incident, an opposing government candidate spat a mouthful of beer over him in a restaurant. When Duc responded with a punch in the nose, he was jailed on a charge of attempted murder and released only on the demand of a majority of the House.

Some Duc supporters in Vinh Binh could be forgiven if they hope that he loses this time. In certain areas they claim that government officials have threatened to reclassify their villages as Communist if he wins. This would leave the villages open to demolition and the villagers subject to forced relocation. In other instances, polls were located well outside villages in areas of marginal security to discourage voting and poll watching by the candidate's representatives. Nonetheless, as the campaign ended last week, Western diplomats were still fervently hoping for a Duc victory. "By every indication," said one, "Ngo Cong Duc should be a winner. If he doesn't win, it will cast a large shadow on the validity of the lower house election as a whole."

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