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Western democracy was centuries in the creating. Teaching its fragile forms and subtle exercises to an alien culture would be a difficult experiment in the best of circumstances. To try to transplant democracy to Viet Nam in the year 1967 would seem a rash and reckless enterprise in the worst of places at the worst of times. Yet this year, South Viet Nam has promulgated a constitution written by a popularly elected Constituent Assembly. Voters in more than 4,000 villages and hamlets have gone to the polls to choose their own local officials. And last week the people of South Viet Nam chose a President, Nguyen Van Thieu, a Vice President, Nguyen Cao Ky, and 60 Senators in a free election that confounded the fledgling nation's friendly critics and its mortal enemies. In the U.S. and Viet Nam, by word and by bullet, it was an election conducted under fire.
An Echo in the U.S. Well aware that a successful turnout would destroy their claim to represent the South Vietnamese people, the Viet Cong condemned the election weeks in advance as a "hoax." It was so rigged, they said, that its results would be on U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker's desk days before the actual balloting. By clandestine radio, furtive pamphlet and whispered word of mouth, they warned the peasants to boycott the polls on pain of death. To make sure that their message was understood, during election week Viet Cong terrorists killed 190 civilians, wounded 426 and kidnaped another 237.
Certain that they had scant chance of beating the ticket of Chief of State Thieu and Premier Ky, the ten civilian candidates for President claimed fraud almost from the moment the campaign started. A dozen U.S. Senators, led by Robert Kennedy and Jacob Javits, echoed their claim that the election campaign was a "farce" and a "charade." It was to counter such senatorial critics that President Johnson hastily assembled 22 U.S. observers and dispatched them to Viet Nam as poll watchers.
On the basis of what they were able to see from the necessarily limited vantage point of a VIP tour, the observers reported that the elections were surprisingly unsullied (see THE NATION). But their report was merely corroborative evidence. It was the election results that provided the most eloquent and telling testimony to the integrity of the voting.
Courageous Choice. On election day, 4.7 million South Vietnamese flocked to 8,800 red-and-yellow-bannered polling stations throughout the narrow nation. They constituted a remarkable 83% of the registered voters. Even though no attempt was made to register or poll those people Irving in Viet Cong-dominated regions, the total represented 60% of South Viet Nam's voting-age population—surprisingly close to the 63% turnout of U.S. voters in the 1964 U.S. presidential election. By any measure, it was an impressive and meaningful ballot cast in favor of representative government. Though many of the voters went to the polls because the government urged them to, from crowded Saigon to remote hamlets it still required a courageous choice to defy the massive Viet Cong threats of reprisals.