South Viet Nam: Thieu Faces the Kindergarten

In Saigon parlance, the lower house of South Viet Nam's National Assembly is "the kindergarten" and the upper house "the old people's home." President Nguyen Van Thieu obviously agrees with this derisive view. In the past year, his relations with both houses of the legislature have grown increasingly bitter and suspicious. Last week, in a vote that brought the fight into the open and sowed the seeds of future battles, the lower house yielded halfway—but no more—to a campaign of unprecedented presidential pressure. By separate majority votes, it approved a report that accused three members of cooperating with the Communists....