The Overworked Mayor

The mayorality of Saigon is one of the toughest jobs in South Viet Nam. The capital's population has swollen past 2,000,000, straining every public facility from electricity to garbage disposal to the breaking point. The city is racked by refugees, traffic jams, thousands of U.S. and Vietnamese troops--and is prey to the random terrorism of the Viet Cong. Yet for all his tasks and troubles, the mayor, Colonel Van Van Cua, a doctor and brother-in-law of National Police Chief General Loan, has less of a staff than many a minor province chief.

Cua took the job reluctantly in the first place, yielding to Loan's entreaties that the city needed him. He soon proved to be imaginative and energetic, but he also began to work off the frustrations of his job in bars at night. Last week he stopped a convoy of trucks near his home with a carbine, rerouting it because, he said, it was making too much noise. The very next night the clatter of a Thompson submachine gun sounded near the Saigon River. Two American MPs headed toward the spot, found Cua in the middle of the street tipsily waving the Thompson.

The MPs took away the gun while Cua shouted, "I'm the mayor! I'm the mayor!" When Cua swung at them, the Americans handcuffed him and took him, protesting, to a Vietnamese police station. Brother-in-Law Loan quickly had him brought to his office to sleep it off, and next morning chewed the mayor out in no uncertain terms. But there were also Vietnamese sensitivities to be considered. U.S. Ambassador Hen ry Cabot Lodge expressed Washington's "regret" at the incident, and General Loan announced that henceforth American MPs would confine their arrests to U.S. personnel.

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