VIEW FROM SAIGON SOUTH VIETNAM REGIME IS GAINING STABILITY

Press, Issue 30997, 1 March 1966, Page 16

VIEW FROM SAIGON SOUTH VIETNAM REGIME IS GAINING STABILITY

[By tht special correspondent of “The Times" in Saipan.] (Reprinted from "The Times.”!

The Honolulu meeting has given the South Vietnam Government of Air Vice-Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky a prestige that none of his predecessors had, except for Ngo Dinh Diem. Added to the other reasons for the Government’s success, this should remove it from the danger of a coup, unless such a coup were still to result from the known divisions and jealousies within the Army itself.

As it is, the territorial carps commanders outside the immediate range of Saigon enjoy something of a warlord status, as is illustrated by one who rudely sent back to Saigon the general posted to replace him. Yet even a purely military coup seems unlikely with so great an American presence, both military and in the infiltration of every department of government. The reasons for Air Marshal Ky’s success are partly that he has shown the willingness to learn of a man with no political experience when he took office. Nor is he a man inhibited by fear of opposition from taking any action that is necessary, or from weeding out evils when he can do so. No one denies that corruption still exists under his rule, but most agree that it is less than it was.

Opposition Quiet Nevertheless, with these assets granted, the best reason one can offer for the stability of his Government is that the opposition to it is quiescent, no longer able to summon any fresh zeal for change after having been disappointed so many times with every change that has been made.

The remark by a visitor that Saigon looks pretty filthy—street cleaning services having declined over the past few months—will often draw the almost throwaway comment from a resident that it would never have happened under Diem. “Don’t misunderstand me,” the western resident will add hastily, “I’m not giving you that stuff about the trains being good under Mussolini.” But not only were the streets cleaner, there was a discipline and authority about all departments of government, whereas now it seems that the police carry little authority—as one can see most plainly and frequently from the bicycles carelessly ignoring the rules of Saigon’s new one-way street system. There is a good deal else about the atmosphere of Saigon now that may make Diem’s austerity and dignity seem more noble in retrospect than they were—to the Vietnamese especially. The fastest expanding profession must certainly be that of what are described as bar

girls. The “night clubs” they inhabit are also an expanding industry, in Thailand as in Vietnam, wherever a large number of American ar other foreign troops bring leisure and dollars on the look-out for spending places. Some 20,000 troops bring in a lot of dollars and the problem now is how to deal with the inflation of the last six months. Consumer goods may be rushed in from the United States to mop up the spending power if only the acute problem of unloading ships in the hopelessly overcrowded river can be solved in time. There is plenty of money about; the American taxpayer does not have to do any difficult sums to see that that must be so in Saigon.

Family System Here the blocks of flats are rushed up for fast profiteers: the taxi drivers have never done so well in their lives; servants leave old employers for newly arrived higher paying ones; and the foreign wife who complains that she could earn as a typist at a big American construction firm more than her husband does, touches on another part of these economic rapids. There are many different streams and the experience must be exhilarating for some. But the dangers are obvious. Given the Vietnamese family system, with its responsibilities undertaken according to traditional Confucian principles, the class that suffers acutely from the inflation may not be as large as it appears statistically; one thriving bar girl might keep a dozen other relatives going. • All the same it is not a healthy process, and Saigon does not remotely give one the impression of a healthy society. One curious illustration of this, and in itself possibly another aspect of inflation, too, is the number of temples and churches being built— Buddhist, Roman Catholic, Cao Dai and others. This does not mean a sudden rush to worship, nor is it a sign of new religious alignments in a population still alive to superstition though often indifferent to the temple in which the gods are placated. It is in some ways a sign of political activity that expresses itself through these outward channels for lack of any generally accepted channel of political self-expression in a society that has always accepted authoritarian rule throughout its history.

Political Monks Pictures in the western press of Buddhist monks rushing down the street with sticks in their hands at a demonstration have often been puzzling in the recent history of Saigon’s coups. Such demonstrations by no means consist of the faithful coming out in protest. They are the product of a movement growing over little more than the last five years, which has found in Buddhism an adequately indigenous force on which to build. Talking to a zealous cadre of this movement, I noted the constant repetition of the phrase “neo-nationallsm” and for a moment the phrase that flashed on was Black Muslims. The comparison is unjust and

the situation not parallel; but there is nevertheless a touch of the arbitrary. Religion is seized on for an alien purpose.

It is the Mahayana Buddhists who are behind the agitation and who are chiefly responsible for the temple building—for the sites are always chosen with the eye to effect that any commercial developer in England employs. This Mahayana Buddhism is the Buddhism that came to Vietnam with its Chinese inheritance and thus brought with it the same kind of diffusion that time has given it in China. It is not like the pacific Theravada Buddhism that is also found In South —but not North— Vietnam,and here only because it was the religion existing among the Cambodians among whom the expanding Vietnamese had settled and become conquerors. Even now many of the bonzes come from the Cambodian minority of South Vietnam.

Except for Catholics at their best, the politics of South Vietnam’s religions are more prominent than the life of the spirit. Buddhists, Hoa Hao, Cao Dai-4hey all fall into this kind. It is interesting that the Hoa Hao In a kind of warlord way, hold out in their own part of the country in successful resistance against the Viet Cong. Haw can “religions” founded in the 1920 s and 1930 s gain such a following? Truly the creeds of South Vietnam are wayward and in comprehensible.

Victims In Maze No wonder then that government in Saigon is more often in the hands of northerners, or that a suppressed resentment against this seeming dominance b y the north is yet another of the grounds for disliking the present rulers on the part of the southerners here in Saigon. It is the northerners who more often have some experience of Communist rule and who are the most intransigent; the northerners who accept discipline and have energy. By contrast, the softer, less disciplined southerners see themselves as victims in a maze from which there is no escape. So it is possible to be sanguine, and to find this Government in Saigon, if not in any definable sense representative, as capable as any there has been, and thus to be worked with. That seems to be the American view when one hears talks of pacification and of the enormous and varied efforts that are going into reconstruction of every kind. Yet it is also possible to ask, whatever military success may be within reach, and whatever economic miracle may be achieved, how long it will be before a coherent policy can again emerge in South Vietnam. It was the question one asked after the Geneva agreements of 1954. It Is a question one asks again in 1966 in a capital that has known guerrillas in the not far distant countryside these 20 years past: a capital that now finds itself corrupted by events. The resilience has been, for all these years, astonishing. How long can it go on?