SOUTH VIET NAM: The Red or the Green

Printing presses in South Viet Nam last week were turning out a new kind of balloting card. Separated by a perforated line were two photographs: one of playboy Chief of State Bao Dai, the other of austere Premier Ngo Dinh Diem. Next week 3,000,000 Vietnamese will tear the cards down the middle and each will drop into a ballot box the picture of the man he wants to lead South Viet Nam. In this way the people will settle a dispute that has seriously hurt the democratic half of the country so sadly truncated at Geneva.

In Saigon there was little doubt about the outcome of the referendum. Ex-Emperor Bao Dai lives near Cannes on the French Riviera with his family and various European mistresses. From there, often with French concurrence, he has done everything he could do to subvert and destroy the struggling government of Premier Diem. In April, when the Binh Xuyen bandit army tried to grab Saigon, Bao Dai tried to fire Diem. Instead, Diem fought the Binh Xuyen back to the marshes of the Mekong River. Last summer Bao Dai directed an anti-Diem offensive by troops of the Hoa Hao sect, but Diem’s troops scattered them. Said Bao Dai a fortnight ago: “I’ve been accused of betraying my country. But it is not I who have betrayed my country . . . It is the big powers—the men who signed the Geneva pact.”

Premier Diem, a Roman Catholic, is a small, chunky, dark-haired man of 54 who works at a desk in Saigon surrounded by crises and a few personal things—a wooden crucifix, a picture of the Virgin, books titled Social Justice and Thoughts of Gandhi. At a youth rally on a Saigon football field last week, Diem was greeted enthusiastically by white-shirted young Vietnamese. Said he: “I promise you that by the end of the year we will have a democratic regime and a national assembly.” By way of ensuring this desirable result, the ballot card photographs had been thoughtfully chosen: that of Bao Dai in mandarin robes against a green background. Premier Diem in civilian clothes against a red background. “You might call it coincidental. I suppose,” said a government official, “but in Viet Nam red is considered a lucky color and green an unlucky one.”