Loser In a One-Man Race

To many seasoned correspondents in Saigon, the U.S. will inescapably be seen as the chief loser in the one-man presidential election race. After years of official assurances from Washington that democracy was at work in South Viet Nam, Richard Nixon recently--and accurately--declared that true democracy was "generations" away. Nor had it been brought closer by U.S. policy in recent months. From Saigon, TIME's Bureau Chief Jon Larsen cabled this assessment:

IN many ways Washington itself was to blame for the situation. Once again the U.S. has been too preoccupied with images and cosmetics, insisting on democratic elections in a country at war and with few democratic traditions.

Host at a small dinner at his Saigon villa last spring, Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker allowed as how western-styled democracy had been "grafted" onto the autocratic, family-oriented society of South Viet Nam. One of his guests joked, "Mr. Ambassador, why do you use the word graft, when it has so many connotations in this country?" Bunker smiled and replied, "Because I do not want to use the word imposed."

Because of the general unrest that will likely follow, most observers see the election farce as an important propaganda victory for the Viet Cong. At a time when the U.S. and South Vietnamese armed forces have finally achieved decisive military superiority within South Viet Nam (at least for the time being), the country is no closer to a viable, broadly based non-Communist government now than it was in the days of Ngo Dinh Diem.

It can be persuasively argued that the current presidential election would have been farcical even had Duong Van Minh and Nguyen Cao Ky run, because President Thieu's supporters would have rigged the election in his favor. Nevertheless, any election would have been preferable to none at all, if only because the campaigning would have provided an outlet for grievances and opposition policies.

Far from trying to curb Thieu's efforts to "arrange" the election, the Embassy sat on its hands while he prepared to carve Ky out of the race. Last June, when the decisive presidential election law was being rammed through the Lower House (with a wad of U.S. tax dollars), Ambassador Bunker himself was out of the country, attending his 55th Yale reunion.

At the eleventh hour the embassy finally dropped its see-no-evil, hear-no-evil posture and persuaded Thieu to have Ky put back on the ballot. But the move was too late and too transparent. There is a temptation, in fact, to paint Thieu as the archvillain of this drama, but it should be resisted. Thieu was as much the pawn of American policy as he was the spoiler.

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