Word: minh
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...sight to the political snafu that has become at once a bitter joke in cynical Saigon and a source of deep embarrassment to Washington. So long as Thieu held the lines of governmental power and could steer the results in his favor, neither retired General Duong Van ("Big") Minh nor South Viet Nam's feisty Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky would consent to run as opposition candidates. That left Thieu the sole contender, knocking the underpinnings from the U.S. contention that it remains in South Viet Nam at the request of a freely and democratically elected government...
DEMOCRACY may be new to South Viet Nam, but some Vietnamese already seem old hands at the more devious electoral arts. To back up complaints that the presidential race was rigged against him, erstwhile Candidate Duong Van ("Big") Minh and a number of disgruntled province chiefs gave U.S. officials several copies of a ten-page sheaf of instructions stamped "Top Secret." Thieu's government, they said, had sent the documents to the country's 44 provincial governments earlier this year. Whether the documents are authentic or not, they have already played a significant role in the election...
...Minh was the only remaining potential opponent, and when he began to speak of withdrawing, U.S. disappointment over Ky's disqualification turned into dismay. Minh had won a wide following as a patriot and nationalist and was sensitive to charges that he was in the race mainly because the U.S. put him up to it. Unless the U.S. did something to curb Thieu's immense advantages in the campaign, Minh warned Bunker, he would pull...
Bunker returned to Saigon last week and delivered his message to Thieu, then went on to Big Minh's villa a few blocks away. But Minh was not convinced of Bunker's power to put a rein on Thieu's ambition. Next morning, Minh's spokesmen announced his withdrawal...
They also released government documents which, according to Minh's supporters, showed how the election was being rigged. The main item was a 17-page memo to province chiefs; among other things, it told how to fix ballot cards to enable Thieu partisans to vote twice and how to discourage Thieu opponents by finding "a scar"-Vietnamese parlance for a past crime or anything else that might make a man vulnerable to blackmail...