...I had known for a long time what the Americans thought of Vietnam's move toward democracy, and I had been gratified by their firmness about it since Honolulu. ...What Rostow said convinced me that the administration favored unequivocal approval of the draft constitution and that its promulgation had great importance to President Johnson himself. Johnson saw it not only as the fulfillment of a pledge given to him by Thieu and Ky at Honolulu, but also as a public justification of the American war effort.
American support for the war was already slipping at the beginning of 1967, and no one could see an end to the military struggle despite the presence of almost 400,000 U.S. soldiers. With little evident progress in the fighting, it had become especially important to demonstrate to Americans that the South Vietnamese were taking visible steps toward constitutionality and democratization....
(pp.184-185)
The need to highlight this dimension of the struggle meant that the United States would push hard for approval of the constitution. For the same reason, as Bob Komer told me shortly before I left, a new summit was definitely in the works, this time set for Guam.
I returned to Saigon on March 6 to find the city in an optimistic mood. One reason was that no matter how inconclusive the war was, it was still distant from the capital and still being fought with the help of a powerful American army, which seemed to preclude an enemy victory. But the optimism was also due to the completion of the new constitution, which for half a year had been the major preoccupation of the capital's various political groups.
Critics of the war dismissed the progress toward democracy in Saigon at that time --the constitutional assembly elections, the new constitution, and the general elections the constitution called for-- as window dressing, imposed on the South Vietnamese by an American administration eager to provide its protege with a facade of legitimacy. It was certainly true that the Johnson administration encouraged these political events, and that it did so for its own purposes as well as for their inherent value to the South Vietnamese people.
But it was also true that the Vietnamese had their own ideas about democracy. In their more than seventy years of cohabitation with the French, they had picked up a great deal, not the least of which was the French passion for politics and their addiction to vehement political discussion. Politics had made its way into the Vietnamese bloodstream, and if circumstances had allowed it, democracy could have flourished in Vietnam despite all the fractious politicking and bickering a la francaise. In this regard, Vietnamese are no different from people elsewhere. When they have the opportunity to understand democracy and adopt it, they learn quickly. And once the process starts, it develops its own momentum.
Consequently, Saigon was now filled not just with optimism but also with heated discussions over the constitution. The political factions were in the midst of their own debates, but these did not begin to equal the vehemence of the arguments taking place among the generals. For the ball was now in their court. The constitution had been voted by the assembly, and now the military leadership was going to have to accept it or reject it in front of the entire world. (p. 185)
Many of the generals were not happy about accepting it. This was particularly true of the powerful commanders in the four major military regions. ...in the transition to civilian government...they would find themselves subordinate to political leaders with whom they carried no special influence. That was the real basis of their opposition. What they argued, though, was that they had a war to fight and could see no point in wasting time with disruptive complications of the kind sure to follow approval of a constitution. Their attitude dripped with contempt for the very idea that a civilian government could rule effectively. (p. 186)
....
On March 10 Thieu and Ky finally convened a formal meeting of the Council of Ministers and the important military leaders. After a full debate that covered the broad principles and the specifics of the proposed constitution, Thieu urged me to speak. There was a touch of malice in his voice when he half-jokingly introduced me as "the man who just returned from Washington," as if he could not completely suppress a certain resentment that Washington, in my person, was going to have the last word.
I made my presentation as brief as possible, pointing out that I had favored a gradual return to constitutional government from the beginning. More importantly, I said, my experience abroad convinced me that South Vietnam had to be perceived as making serious efforts to achieve democracy, that there was simply no practical alternative to it. When I [was] finished, the council voted, approving the constitution unanimously. (p. 187)
Source:
Bui Diem with David Chanoff. In the Jaws of History. (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987). Pages 112, 113, 159, 162, and Chapters 19 and 22.
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