Word: nguyens
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...race, the pace of the official month-long campaigning that began last week for South Viet Nam's presidency was positively glacial. Until a TV appearance at week's end in which he suggested that a no-confidence vote would be a vote against democracy, President Nguyen Van Thieu had not made a single campaign speech. His total campaign effort, it appears, will consist of three TV and three radio broadcasts. Previously planned visits to the countryside were scrubbed for security reasons, but were unnecessary anyway in the absence of any opposition. Saigon, meanwhile, hummed with exotic speculation...
Saigon's political mood could best be described as tense but basically subdued, despite Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky's efforts to inject some life into it. General Duong Van Minh had dropped out. Ky was barred from the presidential race by South Viet Nam's Supreme Court, then given the go-ahead, but he dropped out anyway, protesting that the contest was rigged. Last week he again publicly called for Thieu's resignation. In place of the Oct. 3 balloting he suggested that he, as Vice President, take charge of South Viet Nam and organize...
...small a vote would constitute an expression of confidence. And though voters could conceivably cast blank ballots as a way of showing disapproval, the President's supporters have ways of assuring desired election results (see following story). By ridding himself of all potential challengers-most notably Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky and retired General Duong Van ("Big") Minh-Thieu had placed himself in a position of power unparalleled in South Viet Nam since the days of the late Ngo Dinh Diem...
...more ominous preview of the sort of opposition that could be mounted in the absence of a genuine presidential election came last week when Buddhists and students demonstrated in Saigon after three of their number fell ill and died during military training. Outside the National Assembly, defeated Deputy Nguyen Dae Dan tried to protest what he said was a rigged election by setting himself ablaze, and might have succeeded had his friends not intervened in time. South Viet Nam's Disabled Veterans Association claimed that 39 of its members had offered to lead a revival of protest self-immolations...
...moved apparently to forestall what the CIA-whose field reports have been consistently accurate in the past-at this stage estimated to be a 40% chance of a coup attempt in the coming months. He handed out promotions to 29 generals and admirals. He also decided to appoint Colonel Nguyen Khac Binh, head of South Viet Nam's CIA-like Central Intelligence Organization, to oversee the national police. Binh will thus have at his command 200,000 armed men, including, besides patrolmen and traffic cops, the much-feared secret police...