The World: Still a Thieu-Way Race in South Viet Nam

THERE was always something fundamentally unworkable about the script for South Viet Nam's presidential elections in October. Authored in part by U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, the plan called for an earnestly contested race among three candidates—President Nguyen Van Thieu, Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky and retired four-star General Duong Van ("Big") Minh. If Thieu won a reasonably honest election, the scenario went, the Administration could declare Vietnamization a resounding success and step up the pace of its withdrawal from the longest war in U.S. history.

Given the mix of personal ambitions and animosities in Saigon, that plot was always less likely to unfold according to plan than to unravel. Last week, in a drama that "needed only Gilbert and Sullivan to set it to music," as one Western diplomat in Saigon cracked unhappily, the show nearly collapsed altogether.

The popular Big Minh, Thieu's only real rival for the presidency, abruptly pulled out of the campaign, charging that the election was a "disgusting farce" blatantly rigged by the Presidential Palace. The only other potential rival, Ky, had already been shut out—at least "provisionally"—by a highly restrictive election law. Then, after a palace showdown between Bunker and Thieu following Big Minh's withdrawal, the nine justices of South Viet Nam's Supreme Court met and ruled that Ky could qualify as a candidate after all. Ostensibly, what had started as a three-man campaign and then come down to one was now to become a two-way race again.

Or was it? The Supreme Court action put Ky on the ballot whether he intended to run or not. But at week's end, Ky announced that he would defer a final decision. Nevertheless, it was understood that he intended to call for a three-month postponement of the election. He was also expected to propose that both he and Thieu resign, and that Nguyen Van Huyen, president of the Senate, become Acting President in order to organize a new election. For the moment, only one thing seemed certain: despite all the maneuvering to restore the appearance of a real race, the election still bore little resemblance to the "self-determination" that Washington politicians talk of when they explain why the U.S. is still in Viet Nam.

Bad Old Days. Even if Ky were to throw all his energies into a campaign, such a race could only have a grotesquely one-sided result. Ky's support is mainly among the military, northern Catholic refugees, and some Buddhists, plus whatever votes he might pick up from Minh's anti-Thieu supporters. Deprived of any chance of unseating Thieu by political means, South Viet Nam's voters could well turn to other methods. Last week, a crippled war veteran doused himself with gasoline and set himself ablaze on a downtown street to protest Ky's earlier provisional exclusion from the campaign; he might not have done so had he waited for the Supreme Court ruling.