SOUTH VIET NAM: The Mixture as Before

While thousands of police and security troops guarded the polls, 87% of South Viet Nam’s 7,328,000 voters last week cast their ballots for a new National Assembly. The unsurprising winner: tough, capable President Ngo Dinh Diem, 58, whose sternly anti-Communist National Revolutionary Movement, aided by disqualification of some antigovernment candidates, captured 78 seats in the 123-man Assembly. Six seats went to the non-Communist Left, and 39 “independents” were elected, but many of them—like the President’s strong-minded sister-in-law, Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu—are staunch supporters of the government, and practically none oppose Diem’s pro-Western alignment.