SOUTH VIET NAM
The proceedings started off with a Bang — a lieutenant named Bang passed out the voting slips. In La Maison Blanche, a forlorn, peeling stucco villa overlooking Cap St. Jacques on the South China Sea, 58 officers of South Viet Nam's Military Revolutionary Council sat on hard, schoolroom-style chairs and scribbled their votes on the ballots. A colonel chalked up the results on a blackboard: Khanh, 50; Defense Minister General Tran Thien Khiem, 5; General Duong Van ("Big") Minh, 1; General Do Cao Tri, 1: blank ballot, 1.
Thus last week General Nguyen Khanh promoted himself from Premier to President and took over virtually absolute power — at least in theory. He promulgated a new constitution abolishing his previous post of Premier as well as that of figurehead Chief of State, which had been occupied by Khanh's predecessor. General Big Minh, the man who had fronted the original coup against Ngo Dinh Diem's regime. To avoid embarrassing comparisons. Khanh ordered his new title rendered in Vietnamese as Chu Tich (Chairman) rather than Tonf> Thont> (President), the title used by Diem.
Khanh plainly made his move because things had seemed headed for another coup by the nation's ever dissident generals and perennially scheming politicians.
Pregnant Procession. Khanh's action enabled him to get rid of Big Minh, whom Buddhists and leaders of the nationalist Dai Viet Party had wanted to maneuver back into authority, hoping to use him as their puppet. At the same time, Khanh won over one of his most important and dangerous rivals, Defense Minister General Khiem, who got a fourth star and decided to throw in his lot with the Chairman—for the time being at least. Asked whether he was now a dictator, Khanh replied quizzically: "For six months I have been head of a totalitarian regime without being totalitarian. I can head a dictatorial regime without being a dictator." But it would take more than subtle semantics to make Khanh's new powers stick.
The Buddhists, annoyed by Big Minh's surprising ouster, again threatened major trouble. The occasion: the first anniversary of Diem's now infamous police raids on the pagodas during last year's Buddhist uproar. Addressing 4,000 faithful in Saigon, Thich (Venerable) Tarn Chau vowed that "Buddhists will rise against the government if it begins to resemble the former Diem regime."* The Buddhists proceeded to make a series of difficult if not impossible demands, including elimination from the government of all former Diem officials and the final release of four generals whom Khanh had deposed when he took power and has kept under surveillance in the pleasant resort city of Dalat.