South Viet Nam: With a Little Bit of Luck

After weeks of wrangling with Premier General Nguyen Khanh, the High National Council formed to reorganize South Viet Nam’s government produced a provisional constitution last week. In view of the recent past, its title was reassuring: “Charter Establishing a Governmental Framework to End Legal Anomalies and Uncertainties Remaining from Saigon’s Political Crisis of Late August.”

The charter is hardly apt to end South Viet Nam’s myriad uncertainties. Ostensibly it provides for replacing Khanh, who was overthrown by riots two months ago but has stayed on, supposedly as caretaker. The document, however, reflects another power struggle between Khanh and his old rival, General Duong Van (“Big”) Minh. Evidently planning on retaining military say-so by making himself commander in chief, Khanh tried to persuade the 17-member council, made up entirely of civilians, to grant the army a “position of honor,” exempting it from government jurisdiction. The council turned down the idea, but did provide a definite voice for the military.

Sometime Porter. Big Minh had been the High National Council’s choice for chief of state, but because the post was to be occupied by a civilian, Minh would have had to resign from the army. This Minh refused to do at the last moment, so the High Council appointed in his place its own chairman, a fragile elder statesman, Phan Khac Suu, 63, who spent eight years in prison for his opposition first to the French and later to Diem. At least theoretically, Suu was empowered to pick a civilian Premier to replace Khanh, reportedly asked Saigon Mayor Tran Van Huong, 61, a sometime porter, clerk-typist and school official, who says: “I was born under an unlucky star.”

Khanh was obviously most interested in how solidly the army was behind him. He promoted some officers who had saved him from September’s “coupette,” while the trials of 13 others, charged with leading the insurrection, were dropped. To be on the safe side, Khanh put 13 under house arrest and retired eight of them from the army.

Farewell Party. At week’s end, as his term as interim Premier supposedly was about to expire, Khanh announced his “imminent return to the army.” Then he gave himself a farewell party, attended by hundreds of bureaucrats, diplomats and journalists. While mortars throbbed in the distance during a government-Viet Cong clash, the band tootled out an appropriate swan song -With a Little Bit of Luck.

The jerry-built new regime would need more than a little bit of luck to survive. But some observers believe that South Viet Nam’s warring factions, shaken by anarchy and Viet Cong inroads, are coming to realize the need for stability. Startlingly, a Buddhist weekly in Hue declared last week: “If Communism triumphs, Buddhism cannot survive.” Published over the name of left-leaning Thich Tri Quang, the editorial was the Buddhists’ strongest anti-Communist statement yet.