Efforts Made To Help Vietnamese Peasants

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30971, 29 January 1966, Page 21

Efforts Made To Help Vietnamese Peasants

(N.Z.P.A. -Reuter)

SAIGON.

The difference between Saigon—often called the “Paris of Asia” —and the countryside is enough to shock even the easygoing Vietnamese.

To narrow the gap between the high-living Saigonese and the lowly Vietnamese peasant, the Prime Minister, General Ky, imposed an “austerity curfew” on the capital and declared a war *on poverty immediately after he assumed the premiership.

“Everything for the countryside” became the catchphrase of the Government of South Vietnam’s youngest Prime Minister. General Ky, at 34, is perhaps more profoundly aware of the growing demand among the peasantry for better food, clothing and shelter than any of his predecessors. With Saigon’s glittering nightlife almost extinguished by his Government’s curfew, he turned to assessing the situation in the countryside at first hand. In his trips throughout South Vietnam, he exchanged blunt talk with province, district, village and hamlet chiefs.

Time and again, General Ky and his Ministers traced the nation’s problems to: a grasping merchant class trying to cash in on the insecurity through hoarding and financial speculation; and the Viet Cong, two of whose ranking financial commissars have defected out of revulsion against the economic disruption and hardship imposed on the peasantry as part of the guerrilla campaign. General Ky concluded, and the United States agreed, that the keys to progress against the Viet Cong insurgency were the economic betterment of the peasants and security. LAND REFORM The long-shelved programme of land reform came under renewed scrutiny. In some areas of Vietnam, where only one out of 10 farmers owns his land, land titles are once again being distributed. Government land or that belonging to absentee landlords is being given to the tillers. American aid aimed at developing industry has been redirected so everything from cough drops to fertilisers is flowing into the countryside. Kerosene, medicines, wheat, cotton seed oil, galvanised metal and asbestos roofing are becoming available to the peasantry in larger quantities than ever before, much of it as giveaway aid. But security is still the most desperately sought commodity among Vietnam’s 10 million peasants, and it’s over the question of how best to provide security that General Ky’s Government is butting heads with the country’s low-level leadership. SAME COMPLAINT Province, district, village and hamlet chiefs invariably voice the same complaint: deeply grateful for Saigon’s genuine concern over the economic welfare of the peasants, they still feel that without adequate security, the impact of increased aid for the countryside will be lost. American aid has been and will continue to be appreciated by the Vietnamese peasant. But he will continue to withhold his loyalty until he knows that he will not be shot for saluting the national, rather than the Viet Cong flag. “You can’t protect a villager only 23J hours a day, because he can be killed just as dead in thirty minutes,” says one province chief. Low-level leaders see their

job as one of providing almost air-tight security for the peasantry. After almost 20 years’ of continuous warfare, Government representatives closest to the peasantry believe that the average Vietnamese will give his loyalty to whoever appears strongest. LIMITED HORIZONS

The horizons of the Vietnamese peasant are usually limited to the boundary of his hamlet, village or district. For-years, the only men who possessed rifles in the villages were the Viet Cong, while the Government military was a far away thing that lived in camps near the district or province capital.

The question of putting Government troops in the village is the principal source of disagreement between the central Government and representatives at the lowest level. The Government’s obvious priority on maintaining a large regular army at the expense of hamlet, village, district and province militia is the greatest disappointment to low-level administrators.

“Every young man I catch between the ages of 17 and 32 has to be sent to the national army,” complains a typical village chief. “This means I can only recruit men older than 32 for the village militia. And the 33-year-old men are not willing to risk their lives and those of their families for £4 a month, especially when they are unsure whether the regular army will leave their camps and come to the rescue in the event of a Viet Cong attack.”