Victory for Diem

To the beating of drum and gong, 86.4% of the eligible voters in South Viet Nam last week went to the polls to elect the country's first National Assembly. Result: a landslide victory for President Ngo Dinh Diem's National Revolutionary Movement. Despite highhanded campaign regulations that hobbled any organized opposition to Diem, the election was no mere formality. There were many independent candidates in the running. Voters indicated Diem's basic popularity by voting heavily for openly pro-government candidates of whatever party, including Diem's brother and sister-in-law and four of his Cabinet ministers.

But the most telling sign of Diem's increasing strength was the Communist failure to make a threatened show of force. Despite scattered terrorism (an election official in Mo Cay was murdered by Viet Minh agents), the election was carried out in orderly fashion. As their first official act, the new Assemblymen repudiated the Geneva agreement (signed by France but not by the Vietnamese), which provides for nationwide elections next June. South Viet Nam rightly argues that no free election could possibly be allowed in the more populous Communist north, and a rigged one would give the Communists a chance to make the whole country.

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