The World: The Making of the President

SOUTH Viet Nam President Nguyen Van Thieu took no chances on the outcome of this week's one-man presidential election. To ensure that the voting would be undisturbed by demonstrators or the Viet Cong, he ordered soldiers, police and armed recruits of the Popular Self-Defense Force to patrol the streets and shoot to kill if necessary. As voters went to the polls, whole blocks of Saigon were barricaded or strung with barbed wire. Thieu also refrained from setting his sights too high; he declared that an even 50% of the vote would give him sufficient...

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