Viet Meeting Uproar

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31462, 31 August 1967, Page 11

Viet Meeting Uproar

(N.Z. Preu A««n.—Copyright)

SAIGON, Aug. 30.

A noisy meeting last night of about 100 South Vietnamese candidates for the Senate elections broke up in a shouting match after the electric power went out, United Press International reported. One candidate spat in another’s face.

While tiie candidates battled verbally, the Viet Cong waged a campaign of terror in an effort to make a shambles of the Senate and Presidential elections to be held on Sunday. United States and Vietnamese intelligence officials released a statement detailing Viet Cong ->.ans.

Terrorists shot a Vietnamese Navy petty officer to death on Tuesday as he distributed voting pamphlets in Saigon.

Government sources revealed that the Viet Cong had grown so bold that they seized the stages of four Saigon cinemas to campaign against the elections. The senate candidates were shouting into 50 microphones around a conference table last night when the lights, air conditioning and public address system suddenly went dead at a meeting called to denounce others among the 480 senate candidates for accepting “illegal” help from the Government

The electricity went on after about a minute, but order was never restored, in spite of unsuccessful efforts by several candidates to take the chair.

At one point an army captain. Nguyen Juu Khang, leapt up and spat in the face of another candidate, Dinh Thanh Chau, when the latter accused him of running for the senate on a “pro-Govern-ment” ticket The meeting broke up in confusion, and 40 of the candidates later held a session of their own at another hall where they drew no a resolution against “Government trickery” in the Senate election.

At a Saigon news conference, the Presidential candidate and former South Vietnamese Prime Minister, Mr Tran Van Huong, protested against the presence of foreign observers at the coming elections. Thirteen foreign for the Government to cheat countries have agreed to send observers.

He said it would be difficult in Saigon, but in the provinces “those who want to cheat will have a free hand."

He said it would be hard for the observers to move around the country election districts under war-time conditions.

Mr Huong, who is considered the leading civilian Presidential candidate, said the arrival tomorrow of 20 United States election observers was “a matter of grief and humiliation for the Vietnamese people that the election should call for foreign observers.” \ Viet Cong guerrillas today

released 1200 prisoners from gaol in the northern city of Quang Ngai, N.Z.P.A. reported from Da Nang.

The guerrillas charged into the city under cover of a blistering mortar attack. Later, Government troops recaptured 400 of the

escapees, who included ordinary criminals and suspected Viet Cong. The break-out began when between 75 and 100 mortar shells rained down on a compound housing United States military advisers. Then guerrillas swooped into the city in a threepronged attack.