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It was the vote from the countryside that swept Thieu into the presidency as he took 38 provinces to bolster the lead he piled up in the cities of Dalat, Vung Tau and Cam Ranh. In the process, Ky was an invaluable running mate. Out in the countryside, only two Vietnamese political figures are likely to be known by the peasants: Ho Chi Minh and Nguyen Cao Ky. By no means rare was the peasant on election day who, when asked if he had voted for Thieu, adamantly shook his head and said that he had voted for Ky.
Eminently Credible. There was also another large group of voters who knew Thieu and Ky very well and were likely to vote for them as their once and future employers. That group included the 620,000 men in the armed forces and their 270,000 dependents, the police and civil servants, the strongly nationalist, anti-Communist religious sects of the Hoa Hao and Cao Dai, and sizable numbers of Catholics. All told, they represented a potential block of over 2,000,000 votes. The fact that Thieu's winning total was only 1,600,000 votes virtually nullified any claims of fraud, even though Dzu and six other civilian candidates kept their promise and served notice last week that they will ask the watchdog Constituent Assembly to invalidate the elections and order new ones. Thieu's winning margin was so eminently credible that the Assembly is unlikely to take any heed.
Occasional irregularities there surely were, just as the U.S. has its West Virginia presidential primaries and predictable voting patterns in Cook County, Ill. But among the Vietnamese, the overwhelming feeling about their own election last week was that it was as honest as they have ever known, more honest than anyone expected. That feeling promises much for the future of Viet Nam—and for the new mandate of President-elect Nguyen Van Thieu.
Quick Awakening. At 44, the President's boyish face and unfurrowed brow belie a lifetime intertwined with the travails of his country. Thieu, whose name means "one who ascends," was born in the village of Ninh Chu on the South China Sea. His father was a farmer and fisherman, but his brother Hieu, 16 years his senior and now his Ambassador to Rome, was a Paristrained lawyer and the family's chief meal ticket. It was Hieu who sent Thieu to school in Saigon and Hué. Thieu had just finished high school when World War II began and the Japanese came. His first contact with the U.S. was inauspicious: American planes bombed Ninh Chu by mistake in a raid on Japanese coastal installations. Moreover, he recalls, "everyone at the time believed that the Japanese had grven us our liberty" from the French.
When the French came back in 1945, Thieu, like so many of his countrymen, chose patriotism over ideology and enlisted in the Viet Minh, the forerunners of the Viet.Cong. He was a district chief, but his awakening came quickly: "By August of 1946, I knew the Viet Minh were Communists. They shot people. They overthrew the village committee. They seized the land." Thieu decided that the Communists were Viet Nam's real enemy, and he sneaked off to Saigon. There he tried the merchant marine and won an officer's rating, but he turned down a billet on a ship when he found the French owners proposed to pay him less than their French officers.