Word: nguyens
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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...
SOUTH Viet Nam's President Nguyen Van Thieu had remained conspicuously silent for a month. Now, accompanied by his bodyguards, he made his way to Saigon's television studios to defend before a fretful nation his decision to proceed with the presidential election next month. The election will be unusual even by Vietnamese standards: only Thieu's name will be on the ballot. Dismissing any notion of resigning to assure a fair race among equal contestants as "the act of a deserter," Thieu proposed to make, the election a referendum on his popularity. The terms: "I would...
...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...