Word: districts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...than 540 candidates -all certified anti-Communists-and last week Premier Nguyen Cao Ky officially opened the campaign with a speech urging his countrymen to "get out and vote." While Ky was promoting the elections, however, the V.C. installed a loudspeaker across a canal from Saigon's warehouse district, began to blare out attacks against them. Another Viet Cong detachment invaded a village ten miles from Saigon, spent the night replacing the government's neatly printed election slogans with their own: "Welcome the Ho Chi Minh Regime...
...selfhelp. It took root a year ago, when a dozen youth leaders petitioned him to let them take over an entire province and demonstrate what they could offer in leadership. Ky would not go that far, but to their surprise handed them complete administrative control of Saigon's District 8-a squalid, 3-sq.-mi. slum packed with 30,000 war refugees...
Replacing district officials, the youths marshaled 1,000 student friends, embarked on an ambitious improvement scheme. Nguyen Tan Phuoc, 19, a high school junior, began running a bulldozer on the site of the district's first public high school, which the students are building. Mai Viet Phuong, 20, organized hog co-operatives among the district's farmers. Standing in red clay soil that squished over his sandals, Luong Van Tron, 20, a law student, recalled how his pals kidded him at first about stooping to such "cheap" labor; now eight of them have joined...
...started shoveling away piles of garbage that had accumulated in the shantytown, the neighbors greeted their efforts with cynical amusement, figuring that the clean-cut do-gooders would soon tire of such dirty toil. One morning after two months, however, 90 locals turned out to help; from then on District 8 became a joint enterprise. Residents and student volunteers dredged 30 acres of dumps and swamps, dug drainage ditches and water reservoirs, carved out three miles of street. New homes have been started for 600 families. One hospital and 17 health centers have been built to combat, among other ills...
Cots & Cottages. The district headquarters, a stately home usually occupied exclusively by the district chief, has been converted into a campground for the new cadres, looks like an unsupervised fraternity house with its clutter of cots and guitars. The new district chief, Mai Nhu Manh, a graduate of the National Institute of Administration, boasts only a corner bed with a mosquito net. Says a young colleague, Law Graduate Doan Thanh Liem: "The only thing that is important to us is a change in mentality, a sense of community." Only one American, a 24-year-old named Charles Sweet, is advising...