The Making of a Loser

VIETNAMESE who trooped faithfully to the polls across South Viet Nam last week had in many cases to make choices that might have left a Univac smoking. No fewer than 1,297 candidates were vying for 159 seats in the often rambunctious Lower House of the National Assembly. In one Saigon district, for example, voters had to sift through a sheaf of 81 ballots, each printed with a candidate's photograph and symbol, and choose five to seal in a little brown envelope, which then was dropped in a ballot box. In a number of areas, moreover, voters who wanted to register antigovernment sentiments found that balloting was not only a complex procedure but also ultimately superfluous. Except in some northern and coastal provinces that returned opposition candidates in unexpected strength, many of the polls seem to have been staffed by officials who believed strongly in what Will Rogers used to call "the old political mode of counting-two for me and one for you."

What did it all prove? Primarily that South Viet Nam's ruling politicians have imbibed only sparingly of the spirit of democracy, while adopting every trick in the freewheeling history of American ward politics and adding some new wrinkles of their own. On election day, TIME Correspondent Rudolph Rauch made a tour of the Mekong Delta province of Vinh Binh, where the government seemed particularly intent on making certain that popular Opposition Deputy Ngo Cong Duc lost (TIME, Sept. 6). Rauch's report:

The most striking thing about the polling in Vinh Binh was the thoroughness with which the ground had been prepared. There was no atmosphere of terror, but rather a palpable feeling of unease and fear that made it easy to persuade people not to see what they were looking at, not to hear what was said -in short, not to interfere. That atmosphere hung heavy at Dinh Binh, a tiny hamlet two miles down a mud footpath from the nearest village big enough to have a helicopter pad. At high noon, clusters of Vietnamese stood idly between the Catholic church and the school that housed the polling stations. Why was no one voting? "It's lunchtime," a national policeman explained. Reminded that the polls were to be open from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. with no break for lunch, the cop barked into his walkie-talkie, then grunted an order. The people in the square lined up and began moving into the school building. "They're voting now," the policeman smiled.

Inside one of the village's three polling stations, a row of men sat against the far wall clipping corners off voters' registration cards. There were stacks of cards on the table in front of them -far more cards than there were people in the room. Although the law says that voters must bring their cards with them when they come to vote and that they must take them with them when they leave, very few voters left with cards. "Security," explained the election supervisor. A Viet Cong might steal a voting card and unlawfully exercise a registered voter's franchise. "So we keep the cards in a safe place and give them out again before the presidential election," said the official.

Numerous "Readjustments." To assure an honest election, the opposition candidates were to have observers at each of Vinh Binh's 152 polling stations. Ngo Cong Duc, who has held the seat since 1967, was assigned 152 observers, but most of them were denied credentials or were otherwise harassed, and only ten actually managed to observe anything. At one station, Duc's poll watcher was marched outside when the recounting began in earnest at 1 a.m. and forced to squat in a rice paddy while a guard held a gun over his head. Another Duc observer charged in an affidavit that he "could not look at or sign the report of the balloting. The officials took all my certification with them when they left the polls."

A Popular Forces captain said quite candidly that military leaders in the district had been called together and instructed to be ready to switch ballot boxes after the polls closed at 4 p.m. Whatever happened, it was obvious that numerous "readjustments" occurred. Tallying the vote in four villages. Duc's poll watchers counted 3,103 ballots for their man and 486 for Ton That Dong, his pro-government opponent.

That was just after the polls closed. According to Duc's observer in Hoa Thuan, one of the officials then radioed the local results-713 votes for Due, 271 for Dong-to the village headquarters at 11 p.m. Headquarters replied that a mere radio report would not be acceptable, and that the village chief would come personally to pick up the results. At 2 a.m., when all of the observers were asleep, the local officials quietly began a recount. They finished at 3:30 a.m., and by 4 a.m. they were off to headquarters with all the voting records, all the ballots, and a brand-new total: 101 votes for Duc, 809 for Dong. The final, province-wide results showed Dong a smashing winner.

Copter from Ky. After the polls closed, we found Duc in Phu Vinh village, standing alone in front of the iron gates leading to the soccer field, where a helicopter waited to take him back to Saigon. The chopper had been provided by Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky, a former air vice marshal, apparently on the grounds that any political enemy of President Thieu was a friend of his. But for the moment Duc was going nowhere; on orders of the Thieu-appointed province chief, the helicopter was surrounded by police. As children danced around him, Duc made his way to the province chief's quarters. He came out a few minutes later, followed by the local police chief, whose smile indicated that Duc would have no trouble getting to Saigon now. Due walked back, the gates opened, and the police formed a mocking honor guard on either side of the path to the chopper. "I can't go back to Vinh Binh," Due said later, "or I'll be arrested."

Duc claims that Vinh Binh-style shenanigans went on in at least ten of Viet Nam's 44 provinces, and he promises to go to court to try to get the election invalidated. That may not be so easy, since the government denied after the election that Duc had been a candidate at all, claiming that he had withdrawn before the polling day.

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