[Reader-list] The elections have been successful despite the attempts of the insurgency!

[Vivek Narayanan]

A little time-warp for the reader-list readers: a piece from the New 
York Times in 1967 that has recently been re-circulating, on the 
"success" of a South Vietnamese election.

Vivek

U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote : Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite 
Vietcong Terror
by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times (9/4/1967: p. 2)

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened 
today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election 
despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.
According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million 
registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked 
reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy 
the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary 
assessment of the nation election based on the incomplete returns reaching 
here.

Pending more detailed reports, neither the State Department nor the White 
House would comment on the balloting or the victory of the military 
candidates, Lieut. Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu, who was running for president, 
and Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, the candidate for vice president.
A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President 
Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in 
South Vietnam. The election was the culmination of a constitutional 
development that began in January, 1966, to which President Johnson gave 
his personal commitment when he met Premier Ky and General Thieu, the chief 
of state, in Honolulu in February.

The purpose of the voting was to give legitimacy to the Saigon Government, 
which has been founded only on coups and power plays since November, 1963, 
when President Ngo Dinh Diem was overthrown by a military junta.
Few members of that junta are still around, most having been ousted or 
exiled in subsequent shifts of power.

Significance Not Diminished

The fact that the backing of the electorate has gone to the generals who 
have been ruling South Vietnam for the last two years does not, in the 
Administration's view, diminish the significance of the constitutional step 
that has been taken.

The hope here is that the new government will be able to maneuver with a 
confidence and legitimacy long lacking in South Vietnamese politics. That 
hope could have been dashed either by a small turnout, indicating 
widespread scorn or a lack of interest in constitutional development, or by 
the Vietcong's disruption of the balloting.

American officials had hoped for an 80 per cent turnout. That was the 
figure in the election in September for the Constituent Assembly. 
Seventy-eight per cent of the registered voters went to the polls in 
elections for local officials last spring.

Before the results of the presidential election started to come in, the 
American officials warned that the turnout might be less than 80 per cent 
because the polling place would be open for two or three hours less than in 
the election a year ago. The turnout of 83 per cent was a welcome surprise. 
The turnout in the 1964 United States Presidential election was 62 per cent.

Captured documents and interrogations indicated in the last week a serious 
concern among Vietcong leaders that a major effort would be required to 
render the election meaningless. This effort has not succeeded, judging 
from the reports from Saigon