Political Evolution in South Viet Nam

Report Outline
Test of Democracy in South Viet Nam
Foreign Influence in Viet Nam Politics
Political Highlights Since World War Ii

Test of Democracy in South Viet Nam

Presidential and legislative elections in South Viet Nam, scheduled to take place on Sunday, September 3, are not likely to produce any startling changes in that country's complex yet rudimentary political structure. The army will be the dominant social and political force in South Viet Nam after the election, as it is now, and democracy will need more time to take root in a country unaccustomed to representative government. All the same, the elections are regarded as supremely important by both Saigon and Washington; the winning presidential ticket will have a legitimacy that the ruling military junta, which came to power through a coup d'etat, has never entirely acquired.

South Vietnamese and American officials hope that voters will turn out in large numbers on Sept. 3. No less than 82 per cent of five million registered voters went to the polls in the September 1966 election for a Constituent Assembly. Registration for the Sept. 3 elections may reach a total of close to six million.

The importance of the elections to America's future commitment in the Viet Nam war has been brought into sharp focus in Congress. The United States should consider withdrawing from South Viet Nam if elections cannot be freely conducted there, several influential senators of both parties said in speeches on Aug. 11. The previous day, 57 liberal House Democrats had asserted in a joint letter to President Johnson that a serious reappraisal of U. S. policy in Viet Nam would be in order if the ruling junta in Saigon permitted only “sham” elections.