A Stake Worth Fighting For

Giant orange-and-white umbrellas fashioned out of parachutes lined the mall to Saigon's Independence Palace, and everywhere the capital blossomed in red-and-yellow South Vietnamese flags. U.S. Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Korean Premier Chung Il-Kwon, Thai Deputy Premier Praphas Charusathien and the emissaries of some 20 other foreign governments journeyed to Viet Nam to witness this week's inauguration of President Nguyen Van Thieu and Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky. To celebrate the occasion, all Saigon zestfully prepared to take a brief holiday from war in a 48-hour round of ceremony and state receptions, fireworks displays and a giant National Day military parade.

To make sure that the Viet Cong were not making some zestful preparations of their own as they did last year, when terrorists mortared the National Day reviewing stand, Saigon police rounded up all known Communists and raided their usual haunts. The capital's 15,000 police have been newly armed with carbines, and Police Chief Nguyen Van Luan offered an $8,400 reward for information leading to the capture of potential terrorists. There will be plenty of cells for them: to celebrate the inauguration, some 6,000 civilian and military prisoners will be amnestied and released from jail.

Thieu and Ky were to be sworn in outside the onetime opera house that now is the home of the National Assembly, whose lower chamber was elected last week in nationwide balloting. Nearly 73% of the electorate turned out to choose a 137-man House of Representatives from among some 1,200 candidates. South Viet Nam thus completed the edifice of the new civilian government--the fifth and final exercise of popular franchise in the war-torn country within the past 14 months.

A Small Price. Far more than the 60-man Senate, the newly chosen House mirrors the frailties and divisions of Vietnamese political life. Though the average age of the winning candidates is 40, few have any experience in national politics, and only about half possess any identifiable political allegiance. They range from ultraconservative nationalists to radical, non-Communist leftists, and include 16 representatives of Viet Nam's ethnic minorities, 18 former Deputies in the Assembly that wrote the new constitution, 27 military officers on leave or retired, 33 civil servants, 25 teachers and 14 militant Buddhists. Despite widespread fears that the Catholics, who dominate the Senate, would use their expert political organizations to sweep the House elections as well, only 18 of the new Representatives are Catholics. Reason: fearing reprisals if they did too well, Catholics toned down their campaigning, cut their endorsements of candidates by at least half.

The result will likely be a pure, if noisy, laboratory in democracy for some time to come, and plenty of advice will be needed all around. Only two of the Representatives are lawyers, and Robert's Rules of Order is sure to take an initial pounding. It is a small price to pay for the first government in Viet Nam's troubled history in which the populace has a genuine say--and a stake worth fighting for.

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