[NV Greens] Fwd: USGP-INT The Iraq "election": Why history matters...

[Paul Etxeberri]

>"The Past is Prologue"
>
>Why history matters....
>========================================
>U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote:
>Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror
>
>by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times
>September 4, 1967
>
>WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened
>today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election
>despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.
>
>According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million
>registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked
>reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.
>
>The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy
>the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary
>assessment of the nation election based on the incomplete returns reaching
>here.
>
>Pending more detailed reports, neither the State Department nor the White
>House would comment on the balloting or the victory of the military
>candidates, Lieut. Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu, who was running for president,
>and Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, the candidate for vice president.
>
>A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President
>Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in
>South Vietnam. The election was the culmination of a constitutional
>development that began in January, 1966, to which President Johnson gave
>his personal commitment when he met Premier Ky and General Thieu, the chief
>of state, in Honolulu in February.
>
>The purpose of the voting was to give legitimacy to the Saigon Government,
>which has been founded only on coups and power plays since November, 1963,
>when President Ngo Dinh Deim was overthrown by a military junta.
>
>Few members of that junta are still around, most having been ousted or
>exiled in subsequent shifts of power.
>
>Significance Not Diminished
>
>The fact that the backing of the electorate has gone to the generals who
>have been ruling South Vietnam for the last two years does not, in the
>Administration's view, diminish the significance of the constitutional step
>that has been taken.
>
>The hope here is that the new government will be able to maneuver with a
>confidence and legitimacy long lacking in South Vietnamese politics. That
>hope could have been dashed either by a small turnout, indicating
>widespread scorn or a lack of interest in constitutional development, or by
>the Vietcong's disruption of the balloting.
>
>American officials had hoped for an 80 per cent turnout. That was the
>figure in the election in September for the Constituent Assembly.
>Seventy-eight per cent of the registered voters went to the polls in
>elections for local officials last spring.
>
>Before the results of the presidential election started to come in, the
>American officials warned that the turnout might be less than 80 per cent
>because the polling place would be open for two or three hours less than in
>the election a year ago. The turnout of 83 per cent was a welcome surprise.
>
>The turnout in the 1964 United States Presidential election was 62 per cent.
>Captured documents and interrogations indicated in the last week a serious
>concern among Vietcong leaders that a major effort would be required to
>render the election meaningless. This effort has not succeeded, judging
>from the reports from Saigon.
>-


-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /pipermail/nvgreen/attachments/20050203/87dcc20b/attachment.htm