Word: bao
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Free Viet Nam is immortal! Righteous nationalism will triumph!" cried Premier Ngo Dinh Diem last week as his elated young troops cleared his enemies out of Saigon. In the streets of the city, "Da Dao Bao Dai" (Down with Bao Dai) was now the throbbing cry. As for Chief of State Bao Dai during this dark hour in his young nation's history, he continued to make his Valley Forge in sunny Cannes...
...Nationalist South Viet Nam (pop. 10½ million), the French, through Bao Dai. still manipulate discredited sects in divide-and-rule techniques against Diem, hoping to undermine the Nationalists and maintain their colonial influence. "A personal failure . . . imposed from outside," the official French radio characterized Diem fortnight...
...Xuyen terrorists to escape. In Paris, just as Diem seemed to be getting things under control, Premier Edgar Faure brushed off the Diem government as "not adapted to the mission it faces." And on the French Riviera, fresh from a hard day's work shooting down 100 pigeons. Bao Dai, the puffy-faced Vietnamese Chief of State who obeys his French protectors, peremptorily summoned Diem to the Riviera, obviously intending to dismiss him. French officialdom told newsmen that Diem was a washout and should be dropped. "The sequence of [the French] reasoning seems to be thus," one Vietnamese official...
...waited to see how Diem would fend for himself, Diem got busy. Suddenly a new group was heard from. Three hundred young men dubbed themselves "The General Assembly of Democratic Revolutionary Forces of the Nation," met at Saigon city hall, obviously with Diem's tacit approval. They denounced Bao Dai-"a puppet created by the French colonials . . . leading a dissolute life far from his people." They declared him "deposed," and tore his photograph from the wall and trampled on it. Claiming to speak for 18 nationalist parties, they urged Diem to repress the rebel sects...
That night in Freedom Palace, Diem's revolutionary committee drew a pistol on Bao Dai's favorite general, Nguyen Van Vy. With a .45 at his stomach, Vy promised that the pro-Bao Dai units in the Vietnamese army would support Diem's government. Some of the excited young rebels wanted Vy shot on the spot, but Diem eventually let him go untroubled into the night...