VIETNAM: THE PEOPLE, NO
Coffey, Raymond R.
VIETNAM: THE PEOPLE, NO by RAYMOND R. COFFEY On a recent Saturday morning, South Vietnam's Premier Nguyen Cao Ky conducted U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge on a tour of a new social action...
...Our stated goal in Vietnam is to guarantee its people liberty and an opportunity to establish some sort of free RAYMOND R. COFFEY is the award-winning correspondent for The Chicago Daily News...
...The Vietcong are not the popular heroes a lot of Americans involved in the anti-Vietnam war movements seem to think they are...
...and representative government for themselves...
...Anyone who showed promise of developing into a homegrown leader was liable to be silenced with bribes, shipped out of the country, or quietly disposed of...
...There is talk about winning "the hearts and minds of the people," until the phrase has become the weariest cliche in Saigon...
...This, we were told by U.S...
...How can we, indeed...
...The Americans—on an official basis and also in the volunteer efforts of individual soldiers and units—demonstrate much more interest in and compassion for the people they are living among than do the Vietnamese government representatives...
...Possibly the worst piece of luck the Vietnamese ever had was to be colonized by the French, instead of by the British—or almost anyone else...
...But the next day I went back alone and talked again with a young army lieutenant who was one of the leaders in the project and who had played a major role in persuading the Ky government to give its approval...
...It was an impressive show...
...There are dozens of political parties, but even the two largest of them claim no more than 1,500 members each...
...Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge on a tour of a new social action project in one of Saigon's more shocking slum sections...
...On top of that there was official concern that the good work being done in the slum district was making others in the government look bad...
...adviser reported that the chief in his district agreed to participate in such a program only after the chief was permitted to select for his wife a few of the surplus Women's Army Corp blouses provided for distribution among the needy women of a village...
...But he is trapped in a sick system, and he is in no position to move strongly on his own...
...Our society is disintegrated and divided," he continued...
...The Saigon government does not have even that, and there is little to indicate that things are going to get better anytime soon...
...They are expert practitioners of terror and intimidation...
...They control the areas they hold with a heavy hand, and they bleed the peasantry for rice and taxes while promising it land reform...
...American or Vietnamese troops sweep into a village on a military operation and drive out the Vietcong...
...Government officials were also exerting pressures to replace the unpaid volunteers with paid workers who would fatten the bureaucratic patronage system...
...But there is still no freedom to protect...
...The uproar, however, was not related to the substance of the story, but to the fact that the correspondent who wrote the story had violated an "off the record" agreement...
...Similarly, Saigon recently suffered a shortage of canned milk almost entirely because of hoarding by speculating merchants...
...There is little said—and considerably less done—about what the people can expect in return for such unquestioning support...
...There is much talk in Saigon and Washington about protecting freedom...
...But so far it had not turned loose a dime and the volunteers were getting by on what they could beg or borrow...
...But they are not driving big black Mercedes sedans and getting rich off the war...
...and the army must have confidence in the people, in the students, in the political parties...
...In theory, these operations are to be followed up with a "pacification" program through which the village is secured militarily, and government cadres come in with medical aid, psychological warfare, and other programs designed to win the people to the side of the Saigon government...
...Ky tells student groups they are free to criticize the government and the war, but then warns them, smilingly, that "We are not going to permit demonstrations in the streets...
...The French never bothered to train the Vietnamese for anything like a civil service...
...The Vietcong promises the people land reform and a better life...
...The crisis in our country," said the young lieutenant working in the slum project, "is that no one has confidence in anyone anymore...
...These local officials have military command as well as civil administrative responsibilities, and too often they ignore or neglect their civil duties...
...He has threatened, for example, to execute publicly war profiteers and corrupt government officials...
...Still another major problem is the fact that the government remains "invisible" in much of the country beyond Saigon...
...They have, in the words of a leading U.S...
...all they do is criticize...
...But no one seems to be listening...
...Another difficulty is the "coup mentality" that has developed since the Diem days...
...He is also given credit for being genuinely concerned about his country and its people...
...A Vietnamese government employe and I were caught one day in a horrendous traffic jam...
...What's this all about...
...All this, unhappily, is just a mild example of how things are going politically these days in South Vietnam...
...And so it seemed...
...The French did not leave behind even such fundamental concepts as public health and sanitation...
...The government had promised ten million piastres (about $100,000) for the program...
...The Vietnamese have no tradition of a strong central government and not even the beginnings of a genuine political system...
...The current government is a delicately balanced collective leadership in which Ky does not even hold the strongest hand...
...One of Saigon's English language newspapers was recently suspended for five days for publishing stories which some censor decided were comforting to the Vietcong...
...After I wrote a story about the project, the lieutenant himself was called upon by a representative of the national police and reprimanded for getting "too much personal publicity...
...But the Saigon government brought no charges...
...Most areas do not even have a program, such as that in the Saigon slum district, for the government to wreck...
...But if the shooting stopped tomorrow, they would still be burdened with a military dictatorship riddled with corruption, incompetence, and, worst of all, what appears to be an almost total lack of concern or compassion for the people...
...spokesmen, was just the sort of thing that was needed—this was how the political war for "the hearts and minds of the people" could be won...
...Instead, the United States bailed him out by shipping in much more milk than before...
...Furthermore, not only is the central government a tight military clique, but every province and district chief out in the countryside is a military appointee who often holds his job for no better reason than that he is a friend or relative of some .official or other influential person in Saigon...
...The traffic jam was plainly more important to him than another change of government...
...Ky himself, a sleek little man who wears lavender scarves and an Erroll Flynn mustache, is generally considered to be personally honest—which puts him ahead of several other top generals in the ruling directorate...
...A few weeks ago there was a high level uproar in Washington and Saigon over a news story filed from Saigon which reported that recent White House emissaries to Vietnam had returned disenchanted with the quality of the South Vietnamese government, specifically its lack of concern for its people...
...the fact is that the Saigon government has neither the programs nor the personnel it needs for an effective "pacification" program...
...We must start at the bottom with the people and give them something to believe in by our deeds and not by more promises at the top...
...We cannot have a revolution just by changing the actors in the scenario...
...Almost the only tangible evidence of government the villagers see are the soldiers (the Vietnamese, not the Americans) who steal their chickens as they pass through...
...AID mission...
...It seemed clear to me, at least, that the Vietnamese people generally have come close to just not caring anymore...
...The people are astonishingly apathetic about it all...
...But the most disheartening aspect of the whole situation is the evidence, which must be all too plain to the Vietnamese people, that their government really does not care about them...
...In contrast, the public pronouncements of Ky and other government officials are devoted to lectures on every citizen's duty to support the government and the war...
...the evidence is everywhere at hand...
...American military and civilian representatives in the field complain that often they have difficulty persuading their Vietnamese counterparts even to stand around and look interested when the Americans are distributing food to villagers or bringing in a medical team to treat them...
...counter-insurgency expert in Saigon, at least "an image of morality...
...They have no faith in their present government, and they see little hope that the next one, or the next, or the next, is likely to be much better...
...The harsh truth is that almost no one in Saigon really cares...
...Maybe a coup," he replied calmly, then went about urging the taxicab driver to find a way out of the mess...
...All they want, immediately at least, is for the war to end and the bombs to stop dropping and tearing up their villages and rice paddies...
...As gloomy as the political picture is, it must be said that probably only the military could manage the government at the moment...
...He is merely the most acceptable at the moment to everyone else...
...After weeks of pressure from the United States, Ky finally removed Chi as province chief—only to give him a new job in the defense ministry, where the opportunities for personal enrichment are, if anything, even greater...
...I asked...
...The ambassador was told how hundreds of high school and university student volunteers, working under a small cadre of army officers and government officials, were helping the people build schools, set up dispensaries, organize hog-raising cooperatives, care for refugees, establish adult education programs, even hold hamlet "elections to choose their own unofficial leaders...
...And, indeed, the young volunteers had brought off some splendid achievements...
...But the Saigon city administration was stalling plans for another...
...They want to let the bids to a contractor so they can get a commission [bribe]," the lieutenant said...
...they must be more positive...
...But in practice the villages are seldom made secure, and the people are faced with the possibility the Vietcong may come back...
...He recently returned from a four-months survey of conditions in South Vietnam...
...Anyone who dares criticize the Saigon regime is liable to reprisal...
...But the young Viet lieutenant and his colleagues who try to do something about it get from their government, instead of the support they need, a rap on the knuckles...
...Anyone—such as the young lieutenant in the Saigon slum project —who shows promise of leadership is much more likely to be regarded by the government as a threat than as a potential asset...
...There can be no argument over Saigon's lack of concern...
...The U.S...
...one discouraged U.S...
...This may all be true...
...So far Ky has talked a better game than he has played...
...adviser asked...
...The Vietcong is the only effective political organization that exists in South Vietnam...
...Yet Ky took no action against the hoarders...
...officials reportedly had been threatened with death if they exposed the situation...
...Our intellectuals must have more discipline...
...He is a lawyer in civilian life, a former student leader, and an intensely idealistic intellectual whom I had met previously when he helped push a program in which student volunteers had built hundreds of new homes for refugees...
...How can we get the Viet people to believe in their government when they see we're a lot more interested in them than their own district chief is...
...But not long ago the United States pulled its aid officials out of Binh Tuy Province and halted its program there on the basis of evidence that the province chief, Lieutenant Colonel Pham Dinh Chi, was diverting aid money to his own pocket...
...One U.S...
...The students had built one school with materials scrounged from the U.S...
...He still believed strongly in the slum project, but he was less than cheerful about the support it was getting...
Vol. 30 • February 1966 • No. 2
