Anniversary Two-Step to the Polls

It was, trumpeted North Viet Nam's official daily, Nhan Dan, "a festival of the completion of national reunification." In Hanoi and Saigon, as well as scores of other cities, towns and hamlets in between, streets and squares were festooned with banners and painted maps that showed North and South with all demarcation lines removed--and Hanoi prominently marked as the capital. Called out by Communist ward bosses--and, in Saigon, by the pealing bells of the city's churches--some 11 million Vietnamese trooped to the polls clutching pink voter-registration cards to elect the new, 492-member National Assembly that will serve as the legislature for a formally unified Viet Nam.

With characteristic reverence for calendar milestones, the Communists scheduled the election for the eve of the first anniversary of the North Vietnamese triumph of April 30, 1975. That was the date on which Hanoi's tanks rumbled through the gates of former President Nguyen Van Thieu's palace in Saigon, completing the military conquest of South Viet Nam that had been the Communists' goal ever since Ho Chi Minh drove the French out of the North in 1954. Also characteristically, the victors took no chances with the outcome of the Assembly election. In Saigon, local party chiefs lined up families, 20 or so at a time, for roll call, then marched eligible voters off to the polls, where their political choice amounted to striking a few less favored names from a list of preselected candidates. Under such conditions, participation tends to be high: in Saigon, officials proudly announced, the voter turnout was 98%, almost as praiseworthy as Hanoi's 99.82%.

Figurehead President. Reflecting the demographics of the unified country, which will have a population of 44 million people, membership in the Assembly is weighted slightly in favor of the North; it has 249 representatives v. 243 for the South. Sitting in Hanoi, the Assembly will be mainly a rubber stamp to the ten-man Politburo of North Viet Nam's Lao Dong (Workers' Party). The legislators, warned Politburo Member Pham Hung, who is the party's chief representative in the South, will be expected to carry out Lao Dong policies "most scrupulously."

Hung himself is an Assembly member, as are most of the important North Vietnamese Communists. When the legislature convenes for the first time, possibly around May 19, it will choose a figurehead President for the unified country, plus a Premier and a Cabinet. Most likely choice as Premier is North Viet Nam's Premier Pham Van Dong. Others who will probably hold top leadership posts include Le Duan, First Secretary of the Lao Dong, and Mrs. Nguyen Thi Binh, who was chief negotiator for the Viet Cong in Paris.

The Assembly's agenda includes ratifying a new constitution and choosing a flag, national anthem and a new name for the unified country. While the legislators may also be allowed to consider a new five-year plan, which will set the pace and nature of social and economic reunification, the real work will be done by the Lao Dong chieftains at a party congress, the first in 16 years, scheduled for later this year.

So far, the Communists, who remain mildly astonished by the lightning success of their 1975 spring offensive (see box), have been cautious in their treatment of the South. The new government claims that 90% of the officials, civil servants and army members of the Thieu regime who were packed off to country camps for hoc tap (reeducation) have since resumed normal lives. But many top officials remain in the camps; one estimate of the current total, by Italian Journalist Tiziano Terzani, is 150,000 to 200,000.

Saigon itself still retains much of what the puritan Northern Marxists decry as its decadence. Prostitution has made a comeback, bars are busy and rock music can still be heard on downtown streets. A curfew exists--which officials lifted for a day-long anniversary celebration "to allow the people to move about freely and make merry." Though there has been little official pressure on them to leave the overcrowded city, about 500,000 people out of Saigon's peak wartime population of 3 million have done so. But there are signs that the regime may become less gentle about effecting its plans for social and political reforms. Recently, the remaining foreign news organizations in Saigon were told they must close down their offices by the end of this month.

Bad Shape. Hanoi has been almost as equivocal in its postwar foreign relations as it has been--up to now--in dealing with the South. Rhetorically, the regime has been truculent, urging more guerrilla activity among its non-Communist neighbors. On the other hand, last month a polite Vietnamese delegation turned up in Jakarta for a meeting of the Asian Development Bank. The Vietnamese, says one Japanese official, "openly admit that their economy is in bad shape and that they need outside help. They are very interested in joint ventures in which they would guarantee private foreign capital."

So are some U.S. corporations, especially banks and oil companies that held concessions in the oil-rich waters off South Viet Nam's coast. But Washington has adamantly opposed congressional proposals that the U.S. embargo on Vietnamese trade and aid be lifted experimentally. The Administration has repeatedly requested information from the Communists on the 2,518 Americans still officially listed as missing in action in Indochina. But Hanoi has held out, demanding $3.25 billion in reconstruction aid promised by Richard Nixon --subject to congressional approval--in conjunction with the 1973 peace talks. Thus the conflict, at least on a level of dollars and diplomacy, still drags on.

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