Vietnamese view of democracy

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34132, 20 April 1976, Page 17

Vietnamese view of democracy

(New Zealand Press Association—Copyright i BANGKOK, April 19. The election in Vietnam next Sunday will be held without “mud-slinging violence’’ —or Opposition candidates, according to the chairman of the National Liberation Front, Mr Nguyen Huu Tho.

Himself a candidate, Mr Tho told a meeting of 8000 Saigon residents: “You won’t see individuals who brag about themselves, , scramble for seats, sling mud at, and even shoot to kill, one another. “Can such practices be called democracy?” Mr Tho, according to a Vietnam News Agency report monitored in Bangkok, also said: “There is no reason for Opposition candidates because South Vietnam’s Communist Administration represents all the people. “It is a people’s Administration and, since it is in the hands of the majority, who does a minority oppose? What people does the Opposition stand against, and can the people tolerate that Opposition?” Voters in both North and South Vietnam will cast their votes on the same day

to choose delegates to a single national assembly to cover a reunified Vietnam. Real power, however, is expected to remain in the hands of the Communist Lao Dong (Workers’) Party of Vietnam. Mr Tho, who is 66, explained in this way the difference between Western parliamentary democracy and Vietnam’s Socialist variety: “The Western kind amounts to democracy of the people. In contrast, Socialist democracy is democracy of the overwhelming majority of the working people, and dictatorship towards the minority that stubbornly opposes the will of the people.” Women candidates at another Saigon rally told voters that differences did exist between candidates, though not when it came to politics.