Thieu Faces the Kindergarten

In Saigon parlance, the lower house of South Viet Nam's National Assembly is "the kindergarten" and the upper house "the old people's home." President Nguyen Van Thieu obviously agrees with this derisive view. In the past year, his relations with both houses of the legislature have grown increasingly bitter and suspicious. Last week, in a vote that brought the fight into the open and sowed the seeds of future battles, the lower house yielded halfway--but no more--to a campaign of unprecedented presidential pressure. By separate majority votes, it approved a report that accused three members of cooperating with the Communists. At the same time, it ignored another of Thieu's demands by refusing to cancel the three Deputies' parliamentary immunity to criminal prosecution.

Mob Action. Thieu first accused the three in November, when he gave photographs and other evidence purportedly documenting their treasonous activity to leaders of the lower house. When weeks passed and the leaders failed to take action, he began issuing increasingly ominous warnings, declaring at one point that "the people and the army" would "assume the task of beheading these Communist elements" if the Assembly did not. Three weeks ago hundreds of government-paid demonstrators stormed the lower house, which meets in Saigon's neo-Romanesque old Opera House, smashed its glass doors and furniture, threatened some Deputies and demanded the immediate expulsion of the three accused members. Other protesters staged equally unspontaneous demonstrations in a dozen provincial capitals.

Since none of the accused Deputies is a major political figure (one has even left the country since his election). Thieu's campaign was plainly intended to accomplish more than their ouster. For one thing, he was reasserting the presidency's leadership and his determination to push his legislative program through an uncooperative Assembly.

Deputies have taken unconscionably long to act on some key bills and have cut the heart out of others; the lower house, for example, eviscerated the crucial land-reform proposal by preserving the right of landlords to keep large portions of land worked by their tenants. When Thieu wanted to stem inflation, he felt that the only way to do so was by going over the heads of the elected lawmakers. Accordingly, he invoked a law left over from the days of the autocratic Ngo Dinh Diem to decree a massive austerity program that sought to soak up cash surpluses by sharply increasing taxes. Honda motorcycles quickly leaped in price from $200 to $400 and American cigarettes from $2.10 to $2.80 a carton.

Thieu is also disturbed by the growing popularity in the Assembly of the "third force" idea, revived in November by dovish Senator Tran Van Don and General Duong Van (Big) Minh. Though never precisely defined, the phrase--a familiar one to old Viet Nam hands--envisions a regime that is completely accountable to neither the Communists nor the Americans but is acceptable to both. Thieu is understandably convinced that, whatever shape a third-force government might take, it would exclude him--and he is determined to keep the idea from gaining momentum. His campaign is not limited to the legislature; last week the government closed down another Saigon newspaper for advocating "neutralism."

Valuable Vitamins. Legislators, for their part, accuse Thieu not only of seeking dictatorial powers but also of using underhanded methods to increase his influence. His chief legislative liaison, a millionaire pharmacy owner named Nguyen Cao Thang, is famous for dispensing "Tran Hung Dao vitamins," named after the ancient general pictured on South Viet Nam's 500-piastre notes (worth $1.50 on the free market). To be sure, all too few legislators reject the prescription.

Both in his legislative program and in his frequent visits to the countryside, Thieu is plainly striving to extend the sway of his government beyond Saigon. Many legislators, content to serve and deal in the capital without building a political base in the countryside, are unsympathetic to his efforts and are often outright obstructive. It remains to be seen for how long Thieu, in the midst of his struggles to stabilize the economy and strengthen the army, will put up with such tactics before taking more severe steps to curb the powers of the kindergarten.

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