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The P.R.G. wasted no time in issuing decrees that promised some basic changes in Saigon's way of life—especially the stamping out of 15 years of American influence. "Anyone acting like Americans or participating in such American-style activities as opening nightclubs, brothels and other places of entertainment will be punished." Other decrees, broadcast by the government radio station, promised harsh penalties for spying, carrying arms for the purpose of rioting, creating disunity or disobeying orders. "From now on," said the decree, in an abrupt but obvious departure from the days of approved guerrilla sabotage, "everybody is forbidden to burn down public buildings, kill, rob, rape, loot or create any incident that endangers the life and property of the public and of the revolutionary government." All private newspapers and magazines were "temporarily" suspended for the sake of protecting "public peace." On the streets there was already one conspicuous change. Most women, mindful of the Communists' reputed distaste for Western ways, were dressed in subdued, traditional ao-dais rather than the colorful miniskirts and heavy makeup of just a few days before.
Though as many as eight provinces in the Mekong Delta (of a total of 44 provinces in South Viet Nam) had still not surrendered and there was scattered resistance in Cholon, the predominantly Chinese quarter of Saigon, the P.R.G. announced that its conquest was now complete.
THE OUTLOOK. Clearly the new Communist rulers of South Viet Nam were making a bid for public support in the country and a good image abroad. Though still not allowed to cable their reports, Western correspondents in Saigon could move freely about the city. In Danang, one Associated Press reporter and a television camera team were allowed to visit a "reeducation camp" for some 900 captured ARVN officers. All told, some 6,000 officers were in Communist hands, but the P.R.G. announced that over 103,000 captured enlisted men and noncommissioned officers had been released and returned to their homes.
All week the stress in public pronouncements was on moderation. Interviewed in Danang, P.R.G. Foreign Minister Mme. Nguyen Thi Binh spoke of building a "peaceful, independent, neutral South Viet Nam"; she even spoke of the possibility that Big Minh "might still have some role to play in the future of Viet Nam."
The new government faced enormous, immediate, practical tasks: feeding the population, restoring basic government services, disarming and returning to their homes hundreds of thousands of soldiers and policemen who had served the now defunct old regime, finding jobs for thousands of people who have for years lived primarily on money coming in from the U.S. Moreover the Communists, like numerous Saigon governments before them, will face at least some antagonism from a welter of independent political and religious groupings: the Buddhists, the Catholics, the anti-Communist politicians. "The Cao Dai and Hoa Hao in particular are quite hostile to the Communists," observes Harvard Asian Scholar Alexander Woodside. "The Hoa Hao view Marxism as a Western creed, and they view themselves as standing for the residual culture of old Viet Nam. There has been a virtual blood feud between them and the Communists."