World: Diagnosis: Murder

It was late afternoon in Saigon when Dr. Phan Quang Dan, 49, set out for an important session of South Viet Nam's Constituent Assembly. His green, 1955 Hillman was parked under a tall tamarind tree, and he backed it off the sidewalk onto the street. "I heard a dragging noise when I first started to back up," he recalled later, "and I knew right then it was probably a mine or plastique." The doctor's diagnosis was correct. An explosion ripped a two-foot hole through the front seat. Dan escaped with light shrapnel wounds in his legs, but the force of the blast killed two pedestrians near by and wounded three others.

Coming only three weeks after the murder of Deputy Tran Van Van

(TIME, Dec. 16), the attempt on Dr. Dan inevitably raised the specter of an assassination schedule calling for the systematic elimination of the Constituent Assembly's top leaders. Dan is one of its key figures. The articulate, Harvard-trained physician has long been one of Viet Nam's most popular politicians, and in the assembly he vied with Van for the role of chief thorn in the side of the Ky government. A Western-style liberal, Dan has opposed the military's rule in South Viet Nam all along; he has helped lead the assembly's so far unsuccessful fight to persuade the Ky government to abrogate Article 20 of the Election Decree that created the assembly. Article 20 stipulates that the generals may veto any assembly proposal that commands the support of less than two-thirds of the Deputies.

Ironically, Dan was en route to hear the government's reply to the assembly's latest protest against Article 20 when his car was demolished. Chief of State Thieu delivered the answer anyway: the generals would keep their veto. To do otherwise, he said, would "betray the confidence of the voters," who had elected the assembly with the understanding that the present government would keep an avuncular watch over all decisions. Urged on by a letter from Dan sent from his convalescent bed, the assembly vowed to continue to press its case against the government.

At week's end, Dan's would-be killers were still at large, but a Viet Cong who had confessed taking part in Van's murder was in jail. There was much gossip in Saigon about other suspects. But in each case, the most likely remained the Viet Cong, who not only stand to profit from any animosity between assembly and government, but have been on record since before the assembly was elected as determined to kill its Deputies.