Electing a President

The noisiest and in some ways the most convincing vote of confidence in the validity and significance of South Viet Nam's elections was cast last week by the Viet Cong.

As the contests for the presidency and a 60-seat Senate entered the final week, Communist terrorists began campaigning with a vengeance to frighten voters away from the polls. In one day, in a coordinated series of attacks the length of the narrow nation, guerrillas killed or wounded nearly 400 Vietnamese. The old imperial capital of Hue was mortared; a Viet Cong battalion briefly took over the provincial capital of Hoi An, 15 miles south of Danang, leaving 60 Vietnamese casualties be hind; south of Saigon a village housing Viet Cong defectors was assaulted. The major attack was a 10-minute rocket and mortar assault against Can Tho, largest city in the Delta, killing 46 and wounding 268, many of them civilians.

Next day the Viet Cong dynamited nine bridges in a calculated effort to make it difficult for voters to reach polling places. The day after, two Communist platoons overran the provincial capital of Quang Ngai, shelling the U.S.

advisers' compound and freeing 1,200 inmates of the province prison (352 of whom elected to stay behind rather than flee with their liberators). In Saigon's Chinese quarter of Cholon, Viet Cong squads boldly entered four movie theaters and stopped the shows to warn the audiences not to vote.

Heckling in Hue. Undaunted, the eleven candidates for President stepped up their own efforts to collect ballots.

And they faced some sharp heckling at rallies. "You're just a playboy playing at politics," sneered a pretty young woman when Businessman Nguyen Dinh Quat rose to speak. An old farmer at a Delta rally challenged Dai Viet Party Leader Ha Thuc Ky: "We hear you have two big villas and an American limousine." The other Ky, Premier and vice-presidential candidate on the government ticket with Chief of State Nguyen Van Thieu, ventured into hostile Hue, where he had put down a simmering, Buddhist-led revolt last year.

Three times a questioner asked: "Why did you call Buddhists Communists?"

Ky twice denied having said any such thing, then added: "If you persist in not believing me, that is your privilege.

You may even show it by not voting for me on September 3rd."

As the Vietnamese electorate warmed to its role, the civilian candidates who had been crying foul seemed to cool off. The civilian with the best chance of making a strong showing against the Thieu-Ky ticket, former Premier Tran Van Huong, announced that "harass ment has diminished." Front-running Thieu had his own reply to charges of election rigging: "If I were to win the elections by foul means, it would be an insult to myself." President Johnson's 22 observers arrived to see for themselves, and were clearly impressed with the mechanical organization of the balloting. Some 100,000 people were due to be working at the 8,808 polling stations, and more than 460 million ballots have been printed for the eleven presidential tickets and 48 ten-man Senate lists. Votes were to be counted on the spot, the results radioed first to district, then province headquarters and finally to Saigon. A committee of the Constituent Assembly, which framed the constitution, was charged with watching for irregularities.

Because of the threat of terrorism, each U.S. observer traveled with his own security guard. They covered the countryside, questioning candidates and citizens, satisfying themselves about the conduct of the campaign. In Binh Thuan province, for example, Whitney Young of the Urban League talked things over with Senatorial Candidate Nguyen Van Viet. "Does the province chief favor one candidate over another?" Young asked. "I think not," answered Viet. Governor Richard Hughes of New Jersey put the question even more bluntly: "Has it been a fair campaign?" Said Viet: "Fair, honest, with no interference."

Mayor Joseph Barr of Pittsburgh looked up at darkened skies and quipped: "Rain, very bad for elections. Can't get out the vote when it rains." But the observers were cheerfully optimistic: "I look forward to a successful election," said Senator George Murphy of California. "It will not be unlike an election in Beverly Hills."

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