First Step Toward Reform

Corruption may be no worse in South Viet Nam than elsewhere in Asia, but it is far more costly. One corrupt official in a district or province can undo all the South Vietnamese government's efforts to create an image of responsible government genuinely interested in the welfare of its people. That image has never been more vital than in the days since the Communists' destructive Tet offensive. Last week, responding to strong urgings from the U.S. and from within its own ranks, the government of President Nguyen Van Thieu finally showed some signs of doing something about its endemic, pervasive wrongdoers. It replaced six of South Viet Nam's 44 province chiefs on grounds of corruption and incompetence.

Thieu's action marked the first time since the days of Diem that a Vietnamese chief of state had directly appointed province chiefs. Previously, that had been the prerogative of the commanders of the country's four military corps, who often ran their regions like warlords. By coincidence, Thieu had ousted two of the commanders only last month. 10% O.K. Thieu was merely taking a first step. Like their predecessors, his six new men are all lieutenant colonels or colonels, and as military men may still find it difficult to challenge the generals who are corps commanders. Thieu has embarked upon only a limited war against corruption, as a new Cabinet officer unwittingly demonstrated recently in his first instructions to his staff. After a stern warning that he would tolerate no corruption, he said: "If an item costs 100 piasters and you charge the department 200, I will summarily fire you. And if you charge 150 piasters, you will be severely reprimanded. But if you charge 110 piasters, that's O.K." He thereupon smiled knowingly at his aides.

The man in charge of the government's anticorruption drive is Premier Nguyen Van Loc, a Saigon lawyer with no administrative experience, no political base of his own--and a Cabinet under him teeming with powerful generals. So weak is Loc's position that the truculent National Assembly, unable to muster enough votes to attack Thieu directly, was narrowly persuaded last week to drop a no-confidence vote against Loc. Still, on Loc's orders, Vietnamese courts have tried 32 South Viet namese servicemen and eight civilians on charges of embezzlement of government funds, bribery and associated crimes. All have drawn stiff sentences; three officers, found guilty of embezzling government funds or the salaries of their soldiers, were sentenced to death.

Liberation Army. The shock waves from Tet continue to affect the Viet namese government in other ways. A new civilian self-defense directorate of the Ministry of the Interior has set up 53 people's-self-defense units in Saigon and 204 smaller ones in 28 of the nation's 44 provincial capitals, involving in all some 19,000 volunteers. The government is also giving all male civil servants and teachers between the ages of 18 and 45 a week or two of mil itary training, including the handling of carbines on rifle ranges.

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