Maneuvers Before Manila

Saigon's sputtering Cabinet crisis flared again last week, and in its brief glare, Premier Nguyen Cao Ky began looking like an artful Asian politician. Once again the dissident Southerners in Ky's 26-man Cabinet tendered their resignations en masse. Their aim: to undercut Northern influence in the government and solidify a Southern bloc of soldiers and civilians for next year's national elections. The seven dissidents reasoned that Ky would do anything to avoid a messy internal dispute on the eve of the Manila Conference. "The general idea," said one Southern Cabinet Minister, "was to force the government to resolve our problems before Manila."

Principal problem: how to get rid of Ky's tough but tactless security chief, Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, 35, who last month offended the Southerners by nabbing one of their number, and seldom bothers to conceal his contempt for the Southern group as a whole--or any other critics of Ky. Loan, like Ky, is a Northerner who went south after the 1954 partition. The two were fellow pilots in the Vietnamese air force, and when Ky took power last year, he promptly asked Loan to be his director of national security.

Today, as absolute ruler of every civilian and military police and intelligence agency in the country, Loan (pronounced low-on) commands a force of 65,000, serves as Ky's eyes and ears--and sometimes fist. It was Loan who cracked down on the Buddhists during last spring's riots in Hue and Danang. He has taken over control of Saigon's sloppy port security, sharply reducing theft and graft, is currently using his National Police to clean up An Khanh, a shantytown across the Saigon River that seethes with smugglers and bandits. Southerners accuse him of building a police state. "Hell, no," he says. "We don't even have enough gasoline to keep our Jeeps on 24-hour patrol."

Recognizing the Southerners' attack on Loan as largely a device to further their own political interests, Ky has flatly refused to go along with their demands that his security chief be fired--though he did agree to issue a public reprimand to Loan for last month's incident. This was not enough to placate the angry Southerners. Their prime mover last week was Economics Minister Au Truong Thanh, 41, who flew into Saigon from Washington with fury blazing behind his tinted bifocals. In a private session with Ky, he once again demanded Loan's dismissal. Otherwise, Thanh would not accompany Ky to Manila. "So you want to leave?" Ky asked quietly. "What can I do?" The other six Cabinet members were given the same shrug. "If you want to resign," they were told, "we cannot stop you."

Confused as to whether or not their resignations had been accepted, the Ministers fell easy prey to Ky's maneuvering: he appealed to their vanity and simultaneously hinted at a compromise after the Manila talks were over. In the end, only Economics Minister Thanh made good his resignation. Labor Minister Nguyen Huu Hung agreed to accompany Ky to Manila. And who remained behind to take charge of the government when Ky flew off to Manila at week's end? Deputy Premier Nguyen Luu Vien, one of the most outspoken of the Southern side.

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