quote: U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote : Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror
by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times (9/4/1967: p. 2)
WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.
According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.
The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary assessment of the nation election based on the incomplete returns reaching here.
...
Pending more detailed reports, neither the State Department nor the White House would comment on the balloting or the victory of the military candidates, Lieut. Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu, who was running for president, and Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, the candidate for vice president.
A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam. The election was the culmination of a constitutional development that began in January, 1966, to which President Johnson gave his personal commitment when he met Premier Ky and General Thieu, the chief of state, in Honolulu in February.
The purpose of the voting was to give legitimacy to the Saigon Government, which has been founded only on coups and power plays since November, 1963, when President Ngo Dinh Deim was overthrown by a military junta.
Few members of that junta are still around, most having been ousted or exiled in subsequent shifts of power.
Significance Not Diminished
The fact that the backing of the electorate has gone to the generals who have been ruling South Vietnam for the last two years does not, in the Administration's view, diminish the significance of the constitutional step that has been taken.
The hope here is that the new government will be able to maneuver with a confidence and legitimacy long lacking in South Vietnamese politics. That hope could have been dashed either by a small turnout, indicating widespread scorn or a lack of interest in constitutional development, or by the Vietcong's disruption of the balloting.
American officials had hoped for an 80 per cent turnout. That was the figure in the election in September for the Constituent Assembly. Seventy-eight per cent of the registered voters went to the polls in elections for local officials last spring.
Before the results of the presidential election started to come in, the American officials warned that the turnout might be less than 80 per cent because the polling place would be open for two or three hours less than in the election a year ago. The turnout of 83 per cent was a welcome surprise. The turnout in the 1964 United States Presidential election was 62 per cent.
Captured documents and interrogations indicated in the last week a serious concern among Vietcong leaders that a major effort would be required to render the election meaningless. This effort has not succeeded, judging from the reports from Saigon.
NYT. 9/4/1967: p. 2.
I just posted this because it's making the rounds and gives, perhaps, a little bit of perspective on what's going on in Iraq.
I am not saying that the situation in Viet Nam and Iraq are exactly the same, however it's become somewhat common to compare Iraq to conflicts in the past. Why stop now?
I hope that everything turns out well for the Iraqis, and they live in peace and prosperity under a free and democratic standard until the end of their days.
Posted by Telperion the Silver (Member # 6074) on :
Woa... um.. creeppy.
Posted by Eduardo_Sauron (Member # 5827) on :
Indeed...
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Rather astonishingly, Snopes confirms that this is a real article.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Every once in a while, they do have to be real. Keeps things interesting.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
Or you could just scroll down to the bottom of the page I linked where they link to the article in the NY Times archive.
Posted by ElJay (Member # 6358) on :
Like Tom trusts the NYT? Really, Storm. Snopes is much more reliable.
Posted by screechowl (Member # 2651) on :
Or Those who do not learn from history are....
I heard this on NPR and thought about the same: "Creepy"
edited for wording error
[ February 04, 2005, 11:19 AM: Message edited by: screechowl ]
Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
Wow.
Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
I would point out that an unwillingness to see things through on the part of the US was what caused those elections to become pointless 8 years later. If you really want to learn a lesson from what happened in Viet Nam, it's that erosion of popular support can turn a military victory into a strategic/political failure.
Chesterton on why those who support the war can sometimes be irritated with those who continually predict doom based on every last thing that goes the slightest bit wrong (or in this case, even something that went undeniably right):
quote:I venture to say that what is bad in the candid friend is simply that he is not candid. He is keeping something back -- his own gloomy pleasure in saying unpleasant things. He has a secret desire to hurt, not merely to help. This is certainly, I think, what makes a certain sort of anti-patriot irritating to healthy citizens. I do not speak (of course) of the anti-patriotism which only irritates feverish stockbrokers and gushing actresses; that is only patriotism speaking plainly. A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it. But there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men, and the explanation of him is, I think, what I have suggested: he is the uncandid candid friend; the man who says, "I am sorry to say we are ruined," and is not sorry at all. And he may be said, without rhetoric, to be a traitor; for he is using that ugly knowledge which was allowed him to strengthen the army, to discourage people from joining it. Because he is allowed to be pessimistic as a military adviser he is being pessimistic as a recruiting sergeant.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
*nods at Jim-me*
Historical allusions to conflicts and situations decades past really bug me since you can often make any point you want, but I think that if you look at countries that have had democratic elections and democracies in the last few decades, or even 70 years a go, there is a lesson to be learned. It is clear that democracy is not some magic wand that solves a country's problems. Really, it's just a different way of legitimizing power. The significance of democracy, and the elections in Iraq, are extremely murky and can't be claimed as a victory for anything yet.
There is a reason why Iraqi Shia mullahs were pushing people to vote, and I fear it may not be one that we in the west will sympathize with.
Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
quote:It is clear that democracy is not some magic wand that solves a country's problems. Really, it's just a different way of legitimizing power.
no argument there... it's encouraging to have a first step go well, but it's hardly the complete journey.
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
I don't think most people understand the real way in which Iraq and Vietnam are the same. But it would depend on you believing that Vietnam was a sort of chessboard on which the Cold War was played out. That Communist regimes were proping up the Viet Cong, and it wasn't the victory of determined insurgents over our technological might.
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
Keeps things interesting.