Word: diem
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Another kind of battle is beginning in South Viet Nam. It is not a battle of bullets but of ballots. Next Sept. 3, the country's 5.2 million eligible voters will be able to select their first President since Ngo Dinh Diem, who was assassinated in 1963. In a fractious, war-racked country, a weak victor could prove disastrous. A sensible leader, by establishing a popularly based government, could do much to assure stability, security and a democratic destiny for South Viet...
Buddhism in Viet Nam is accorded Schecter's closest scrutiny and lengthiest appraisal. From the last days of President Diem, who fatally underestimated the power of the political monks, to the past year's Buddhist uprisings, which Premier Nguyen Cao Ky expertly quelled with a combination of "tenacity and guile," the book reconstructs the sorties to the barricades in Viet Nam. There, as elsewhere in Asia, the Buddhists' problem is to resolve "the conflict between tradition and transition in Asian life...
...Diem destroyed this 500-year-old tradition of democratic election of village chiefs. He began making local appointments from Saigon, and the appointees--many of them outsiders who did not know the customs of the villages -- were therefore met with open hostility by the villagers. The successive regimes after him followed suit: village chiefs are sent out from the School of Administration in Saigon and other places and they are required to carry out such laws as law 004/65 of May 17, 1965 which demands jailing, death sentences, etc. "to all moves which weaken the rational anti-communist effort...
...Vietnamese Air Force DC-3 approached the mountain resort town of Dalat, Premier Nguyen Cao Ky left the passenger compartment, took over the controls and skillfully guided the plane down onto the tiny airstrip. Soon after landing, he summoned reporters to the lovely presidential palace once used by President Diem and announced that he would run for President in the Sept. 3 elections...
Another declared civilian is Nguyen Dinh Quat, 49, a Saigon businessman and former plantation owner, who in 1961 had the courage-or misjudgment -to run against President Ngo Dinh Diem. His reward was to be dispossessed of all his property by the Diem regime. A Northerner, Quat is now thought to be interested less in the presidency than in being chosen as a stronger candidate's vice-presidential running mate. The third civilian is Ha Thuc Ky, 48, a forestry engineer and Hué businessman nominated by the Dai Vet Party, a small, ultranationalist grouping. No relation to Premier...