The referendum was the last phase in the power struggle between Bảo Đại and his prime minister. Bảo Đại disliked Diem and had frequently attempted to undermine him, having appointed him only because he was a conduit to American aid. During the period, the country was going through a period of insecurity, as Vietnam had been temporarily partitioned as a result of the 1954 Geneva Accords that ended the First Indochina War. The State of Vietnam controlled the southern half of the country, pending national elections that would reunify the country under a common government. The Vietnamese National Army was not in full control of the country, with the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao religious sects running their own administrations in the countryside with their private armies, while the Binh Xuyen organised crime syndicate controlled the streets of Saigon. Despite Bảo Đại’s interference, Diem had managed to subdue the private armies and enforce government over the country by mid-1955.
Emboldened by his success, Diem began to plot Bảo Đại’s downfall. He scheduled a referendum for October 23, 1955, and pushed Bảo Đại out of the political scene, despite the former emperor’s attempts to derail the poll. In the period leading up to the vote, campaigning for Bảo Đại was banned, while Diem’s election campaign focused on personal attacks against Bảo Đại. These included pornographic cartoons of the head of state and unverified rumours claiming that he was illegitimate and linking him to various mistresses. The government-controlled media launched polemical attacks on Bảo Đại, and police went door-to-door, warning people of the consequences of failing to vote. After his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu successfully rigged the poll, Diem proclaimed himself president of the newly created Republic of Vietnam.
Background
Main articles: Geneva Conference (1954), Operation Passage to Freedom, and Battle for Saigon
The defeat of the French Army at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, followed by the Geneva Accords, led to a divided Vietnam. The French-backed State of Vietnam led by former Emperor Bao Dai, provisionally held control south of the 17th parallel. Ho Chi Minh's Vietminh held the north under the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which Ho had proclaimed in 1945. The agreements stated that nation-wide elections were to be held in 1956 to unify the country under a common government. In July 1954, during the transition period, Bao Dai appointed Diem as Prime Minister of the State of Vietnam. On October 11, 1954, the border was closed by the International Control Commission, after a period of 300 days during which free passage between both halves of Vietnam had been allowed. Under the Geneva Accords, anti-communist military personnel were obliged to evacuate to the south, while communist forces were to be moved north. Civilians were free to move to whichever zone they preferred. During the 300 days, the Catholic Diem and his US CIA adviser Colonel Edward Lansdale staged a campaign to convince people to move to South Vietnam. The campaign was particularly focused on Catholics, who were to provide Diem's power base in his later years, with the use of the slogan "God has gone south". Between 800,000 and 1,000,000 people migrated to the south, mostly Catholics. At the start of 1955, French Indochina was dissolved, leaving Diem in temporary control of the south.
At the time, Diem had little authority beyond the gates of his own palace. Bao Dai had little confidence in him and gave him meagre support—the pair had clashed in the past, with Diem resigning as Bao Dai's Interior Minister two decades earlier, believing the head of state to be weak and ineffective. Most historians believe that Bao Dai selected Diem because of his ability to attract US support and funding. During the transition period, the French Expeditionary Corps maintained a presence in South Vietnam. This led to tension between France and the State of Vietnam; Diem was a passionate nationalist detested the French, who returned his feelings and hoped that he would fail, even calling for his removal on occasions.
Diem faced challenges to his authority from four more groups. The Hoa Hao and Cao Dai religious sects had private armies that controlled the Mekong Delta and the areas west of Saigon, respectively. The Binh Xuyen was an armed, organised crime empire that controlled much of Saigon with a 40,000 strong private army, while the Vietminh still controlled much of the rural area. Diem's Vietnamese National Army (VNA) was led by General Nguyen Van Hinh, a French citizen who loathed and frequently disobeyed him. To make matters worse, Bao Dai sold the operating license of the national police to the Binh Xuyen, thereby putting administrative control of the police in the hands of a crime syndicate.
Amid growing French and US skepticism of his ability to provide stable rule, Diem forced the matter to a head in April 1955. He ordered the Binh Xuyen to relinquish control of the National Police and submit to his command by integrating into the VNA or disbanding, threatening to crush them if they refused. He bribed Hoa Hao and Cao Dai commanders into joining the VNA, gradually resulting in the defection of some commanders and their units, while others continued to lead their forces against Saigon. The Binh Xuyen defied Diem's ultimatum and on April 27, the VNA initiated the Battle for Saigon. After a brief but violent battle that left between 500 and 1,000 people dead and about 20,000 homeless, the Binh Xuyen were crushed. Diem had regained both US confidence and control of the police. Jubilant crowds lauded Diem and denounced Bao Dai, who had tried to dismiss him in the middle of the battle to prevent him from quelling the Binh Xuyen. In addition, General Paul Ely, the head of the French presence in Vietnam, tried to impede Diem, and his troops put road blocks against the VNA and gave intelligence to the Binh Xuyen.
Buoyed by his successes, and fuelled by increased hatred of the French and Bao Dai after their attempts to prevent him from dismantling the Binh Xuyen, Diem became more confident as he went about consolidating his hold on power. On May 15, Diem abolished Bao Dai's Imperial Guard; its 5,000 men became the 11th and 42nd Infantry Regiments of the VNA. Diem then stripped Bao Dai of his extensive crown lands. On June 15, Diem had the Council of the Royal Family at Hue declare that Bao Dai be stripped of his powers, and that he, Diem, be made president. Bao Dai's relatives condemned him for abdicating as head of state in favour of Ho in 1945, which they described as a crime against the nation, and excoriated him for his links with France and the Binh Xuyen. Historians have speculated that the royals agreed to turn on Bao Dai so that Diem would not seize their assets.
Organization of the referendum
Man with dark hair and moustache in a dress uniform, suit and tie,
sitting at a table, with a star indicating his rank, in front
of a map on a wall.Colonel Edward Lansdale, who
helped Diem in his campaign
On July 7, 1955, the first anniversary of his installation as prime minister, Diem announced that a national referendum would be held to determine the future of the country. On July 16, Diem publicly announced his intention to not take part in the reunification elections. He said that "We will not be tied down by the [Geneva] treaty that was signed against the wishes of the Vietnamese people." Diem said that it was impossible to have a fair election with communists and as result, he argues that it was necessary to create an anti-communist state in South Vietnam.This was echoed by the Saigon press, which ran articles assailing communist elections as shambolic, rigged and meaningless; at the time, the northern half of Vietnam had a greater population than the south.
A month earlier, Prime Minister of North Vietnam, Pham Van Dong, wrote to Saigon asking to begin negotiations over the specific details of the elections. While the Americans were happy to avoid elections because of fears of a communist victory, they hoped that Diem would enter the dialogue over planning matters and wait for North Vietnam to object to a proposal, and thus use it to blame Ho for violating the Geneva Accords.The Americans had earlier advised Diem, who had been acting in defiance of Bao Dai, that continued aid was contingent on Diem establishing a legal basis for usurping the head of state's power.
On October 6, Diem announced that the referendum would be held on October 23. The election was open to men and women aged 18 or over, and the government arranged to have a polling station set up for every 1,000 registered voters.The poll was contested by former Emperor Bao Dai, who had spent much of his time in France and advocated a monarchy, and Diem, who ran on a republican platform..According to historian Jessica Chapman, it was a choice between "the country's obsolete emperor and its far-from-popular prime minister, Ngo Dinh Diem". In announcing the referendum, Diem portrayed his decision as being motivated by a love of democracy and popular discontent with the rule of Bao Dai. The prime minister cited a plethora of petitions from various social, religious and political groups calling on him to stage a plebiscite to remove Bao Dai and said that he was motivated by these "legitimate and democratic" sentiments. However, it is believed that the petitions were not sincere and were either coerced or made for political reasons.
Lansdale cautioned Diem against using electoral fraud, believing that he would win a free election, stating "While I'm away I don't want to suddenly read that you have won by 99.99%. I would know that it's rigged then." American officials thought that a fair election would have seen Diem poll around 60–70% of the vote.
Under the Elysee Accords and the subsequent legislation that created the State of Vietnam in 1949, Bao Dai's position as head of state was neither permanent nor indefinite. Sovereignty was presumed to rest solely upon the people, with Bao Dai being a mere conduit. As a result, the referendum itself was within the law.Diem had not been elected to his post, so he saw the referendum as an opportunity to rebuff opponents, who claimed that he was undemocratic and autocratic. The event also gave Diem an opportunity to boost his prestige by defeating Bao Dai in a head-to-head contest. It was previously agreed that a National Assembly would be elected first, but Diem went ahead with the plebiscite, which meant that he would have total power if he deposed Bao Dai before a legislature was formed.
US diplomats were concerned that the move would be seen as a power grab, as Diem was organising and driving an electoral process in which he was a candidate. The Americans felt that a legislature should be formed first and that the body should oversee the referendum, but Diem ignored their advice.Ambassador G. Frederick Reinhardt informed Washington that Diem had no intention of allowing a level playing field for the opposition, and that the foreign press had already made much of Diem's democratic pronouncements being a facade. The Department of State agreed and opted to avoid trumpeting the referendum as an exercise in democracy for fear of attracting negative reactions to their foreign policy. Nevertheless, the US were pleased with the referendum, as they saw it as an opportunity to strengthen South Vietnam and avoid defeat to the communists, as they saw a republican model as being more robust.
Having declared his disdain for the 1956 reunification elections, Diem saw the referendum as the first step in creating a long-term state to rule over South Vietnam. He repeatedly said that the creation of a legislature and a constitution for his new state would follow the referendum. Diem saw the poll as an opportunity to legitimise him as a symbol of Vietnamese democracy, so that he could frame and justify his refusal to participate in national elections as a struggle between freedom and communist authoritarianism.Diem asserted that South Vietnam would eventually reunify the nation under a democratic administration and liberate their northern compatriots from communist oppression, and championed the referendum as a first step in nurturing democracy. Diem's support base was to use this as a means of justifying the deposal of Bao Dai, citing past decisions that according to them, were pro-communist.
One of Diem's themes was that the referendum would usher in a new era of unprecedented democracy. He said "This shall be but the first step made by our people in the free use of our political rights." The day before the poll, Diem said that "This 23 October, for the first time in our country's history, our men and women will exercise one of many basic civil rights of a democracy, the right to vote. A government proclamation four days before the poll said "Dear compatriots, proclaim your will forcefully! Go forward firmly in the path of Freedom, Independence and Democracy!"
Campaign
Diem ran a personal attack campaign against the head of state, for whom campaigning was prohibited.The army and national police went about enforcing the ban on pro-Bao Dai and anti-Diem activities.Police went from door to door, explaining the consequences of failing to vote. They also organized conferences in rural villages and addressed the populace with loudspeakers. In general, Diem's line of attack was to portray Bao Dai as a drunken womanizer who was preoccupied with immoral pleasures and unconcerned with the problems of the populace.Vietnam's monarchic tradition was built on Confucianism and the emperor's mandate of heaven, and Diem's campaign sought to prove that Bao Dai had lost this mandate through his debauched lifestyle. According to Joseph Buttinger, who was based in Vietnam as the second in command at the International Rescue Committee, the methods used to influence the poll were "outrageous". Donald Lancaster, a journalist who covered the poll, said "Whereas Bao Dai was given no opportunity to defend himself, the government-controlled press proceeded to overwhelm him with scurrilous abuse."
Diem's advertising included the parading of giant pageant-style floats of Bao Dai through the streets of Saigon, depicted with bags of money on his shoulders, a deck of cards in his hands, and with naked blonde women and bottles of cognac in his arms. This was a reference to the head of state's reputation for opulence, gambling and womanising.In particular, the blonde hair referred to Bao Dai's penchance for European mistresses with whom he liaised with on the French Riviera. Bao Dai's dummy was accompanied by a that of a Frenchman putting gold into his pockets, thereby questioning his nationalist credentials.Posters and effigies associating Bao Dai with a pig's head were disseminated,while a prominent newspaper composed and encouraged the people to sing polemical and insulting songs about the head of state.
Walls and public transport vehicles were plastered with slogans, including "Beware of the evil king Bao Dai's preference for gambling, women, wine, milk, and butter. Those who vote for him betray their country." Aside from referring to his opulent lifestyle, other slogans such as "Bao Dai, puppet king selling his country", and "Bao Dai, master keeper of gambling dens and brothels", also referred to his alleged softness towards the communists.
On the other hand, Prime Minister Diem was described as the "hero of the people" and "father of all children". The slogans exhorted the populace to vote for the prime minister because "To vote for the revolutionary man Ngo Dinh Diem is to build a society of welfare and justice".They portrayed Diem as a patriotic and nationalist anti-communist, proclaiming "To kill communists, depose the king, [and] struggle against colonialists is a citizen's duty in Free Vietnam".
Diem's government-controlled press overwhelmed Bao Dai with endless personal propaganda attacks, with special editions of newspapers being devoted to polemical biographical accounts of the former emperor. This allowed Diem's campaign to condemn Bao Dai with much more salacious detail than was possible through slogans.[35] This started in August when the daily newspaper Thoi Dai started a three week series that disseminated unsubstantiated and scandalous details about Bao Dai's life, especially his relationships. These were written by editorialist Hong Van, who called the head of state a "dung beetle who sold his country for personal glory".
Hong Van firstly claimed that Bao Dai was an illegitimate son of Emperor Khai Dinh. He alleged that Khai Dinh was infertile and had married a maid, before claiming the maid's son—who purportedly fell pregnant to another man— as his own. The paper claimed that Bao Dai was "big like a lubber, had many children, and was very fond of women" while Khai Dinh was uncomfortable with females, hinting that the different personalities were inconsistent with a common biological lineage.
Capitalising on anti-French sentiment, the paper went on to discuss Bao Dai's upbringing in France, claiming that he was already womanising as a teenager because of his European upbringing. Bao Dai later married a ethnic-Vietnamese French citizen, who became Empress Nam Phuong. The editorial accused Nam Phuong of being an agent loyal to France and claimed that she had treated the queen mother badly, a serious character fault as Confucianism strongly emphasized respect for family elders. Hong Van went on to claim that Bao Dai's sequence of Gallic lovers was an indication that colonial officials were successfully using sex to turn the head of state into a French puppet.
The culmination of the newspaper campaign was a satirical pornographic cartoon titled "The Story of Bao Dai". It summarized the scandalous depictions of the head of state made by Thoi Dai in the preceding weeks and was published on October 19, four days before the referendum. The pictures featured full frontal nude depictions of Bao Dai and his mistresses, with genitalia clearly visible,including one frame that showed a naked blonde performing an erotic dance for the head of state.
Aside from painting Bao Dai as a sexually insatiable glutton, Diem's campaign also attacked the head of state's nationalist credentials. They criticised him as being too soft in his dealings with French colonial authorities, and for serving as the head of state of the Empire of Vietnam, a puppet regime set up by Imperial Japan after they invaded during World War II.They also accused him of ceding half the country to the communists. The communists had already captured more than half the country on the battlefield,and Bao Dai claimed that he had no choice, but Diem's campaign portrayed him as incompetent and unwilling to take the blame. As a further example, Diem's supporters pointed to a September 1955 interview in which Bao Dai admitted to keeping in contact with the communist leadership. Bao Dai was further criticised for supporting the various sects, and accused of helping the French citizen General Hinh in his attempted coup against Diem.
Diem used the Ministry of Information's electoral education campaign as a partisan political tool. Instead of using it purely to explain the democratic process, the campaign was used to extol Diem and his allies.After explaining what democracy was, a pamphlet outlined why "Deposing a chief-of-state is a vital act",After elaborating on the powers of the head of state, the pamphlet went on to champion Diem as an anti-communist who could defend people's freedom, while explaining why Bao Dai was unfit to lead, saying that he did not have respect among the international community.
Response of Bao Dai
On October 15, Bao Dai issued a statement protesting against the referendum. He further urged the governments of France, the United Kingdom, the United States, India and even the Soviet Union not to recognise Diem, asserting that he was an obstacle to the reunification of Vietnam under the Geneva Accords. He accused Diem's poll of being "a governmental activity which conforms neither to the profound sentiment of the Vietnamese people nor to the common cause of peace".
On October 18, Bao Dai made the token gesture of formally dismissing Diem. On October 19, he denounced "the police methods" of Diem's "dictatorship" and warned the Vietnamese populace "against a regime that was bound to lead them to ruin, famine, and war".Bao Dai accused Diem of trying to foment conflict between the French and the Americans. On the eve of the poll, Bao Dai stated "I can even tell you that I know the percentage of favourable votes that Mr. Diem has decided to obtain". With no means of propagating his views inside Vietnam, Bao Dai's actions had little effect.
Other opposition
The staging of the election was subsidised by foreign funding. The United States government and a combination of American Catholic charities contributed USD2 million each. Ba Cut, a leader of an anti-government Hoa Hao militant group, distributed a pamphlet condemning Diem as an American puppet, citing the funding as proof and further asserting that Diem was going to "Catholicize" the country. The Vietnamese Socialist Party, which was affiliated to the Hoa Hao, claimed that Diem "bribed the world of laborers and young students to petition in support of Diem's rise to chief-of-state and to petition in favor of deposing Bao Dai" using the American election funding.Another Hoa Hao rebel leader, General Tran Van Soai, assailed Diem as being undemocratic regime and declared the referendum illegal. He invited "friendly countries and the people of Vietnam to distrust this political maneuver".Opponents claimed that Diem's declarations about the value of democracy were hollow. Diem had earlier told a cabinet minister that only one political party—Nhu's outfit, and went about eradicating opposition by force.
Logistics and voting
Lansdale advised Diem to print his ballots in red, while those of Bao Dai were printed in green. In Vietnam, red is associated with good luck and prosperity, whereas green is often associated with a cuckold and bad luck.Diem's red ballots pictured him with youthful and modern-looking people, while Bao Dai's photo was placed in old fashioned robes, which he never wore. In addition, Bao Dai's portrait showed him to appear dazed and bloated, while Diem and those surrounding him were smiling and appeared to be energetic.The ballot claimed that a vote for Diem would be a vote for democracy, stating "I depose Bao Dai and recognise Ngo Dinh Diem as Head of State, charged with the commission of setting up a democratic regime".Bao Dai's ballot read "I do not depose Bao Dai and do not regard Ngo Dinh Diem as the Head of State charged with the commission of setting up a democratic regime". The voters would place the red or green ballot into the box, according to their preference, while discarding the other. This meant that the voting was actually not secret. The use of such methods undermined Diem's later attempts to portray his regime as being morally motivated.
Tall Caucasian man standing in profile at left in a white suit and tie shakes hands with a smaller black-haired Asian man in a white shirt, dark suit and tie.
Ngo Dinh Nhu (right), Diem's brother, supervised and rigged the referendum.
The logistics of the referendum were organised and supervised by Diem's brother and confidant Ngo Dinh Nhu, who was the leader of the family's secret Can Lao Party, which supplied the Ngos' electoral base. Reports of violence and intimidation were widespread. During the referendum, Nhu's staff told voters to throw away the green ballots. Those who disobeyed were often chased down and beaten, with pepper sauce and water sometimes being forced into their nostrils. The violations were particularly flagrant in central Vietnam, a region over which another of Diem's younger brothers, Ngo Dinh Can, ruled.Can was based in the former imperial capital city of Hue, which was the home of the Nguyen Dynasty and a source of sympathy towards Bao Dai.He stifled this support by ordering the police to arrest 1,200 people for political reasons in the week leading up to the vote. In the city of Hoi An, some people were killed in election violence on the day of the poll.
Counting and results
Diem's government formulated procedural regulations that were meant to ensure that results and ballots were correctly accounted for and to prevent election fraud.In reality however, the votes were counted without independent supervision, which resulted in Diem being credited with 98.2% of the vote. The prime minister tallied 605,025 votes in Saigon, although only 450,000 voters were registered in the capital. Diem's tally exceeded the registration numbers in other districts. French newspapers claimed that only half of the registered voters in Saigon had actually voted, and that the rest had boycotted the election, implying that more than 60% of the votes in the capital were not authentic. Defenders of Diem have speculated that this was due to recently arrived refugees from North Vietnam who voted without being enrolled, rather than large-scale ballot-stuffing.
The near unanimous voter turnout and support for Diem was replicated in highland and Mekong Delta swamp areas, which were not even under the control of the government and its Vietnamese National Army.In some districts of the Mekong Delta, overwhelming tallies for Diem in excess of 90% of the registered voters were recorded, even though the Hoa Hao warlord Ba Cut and his army had prevented voting.
The referendum was widely condemned for being fraudulent in a similar way to communist show elections. Chapman said that "Even Diem apologists like Anthony Trawick Bouscaren and American CIA officer Edward Lansdale concur with the prime minister's harshest critics on the conclusion that the South Vietnamese government was either incapable of or unwilling to hold a truly free, representative plebiscite". Many analysts regard the vote as the first notable demonstration of Diem's authoritarian streak.
A CIA report written in 1966 adjudged the poll to be the most heavily manipulated in the first 11 years of South Vietnam's history. The US government privately concluded that the monopoly that Diem had on the media and the election campaign was a greater factor in the victory than intimidation and the fact that the voting was effectively public. Reinhardt cabled Washington, saying that the "referendum proved [a] resounding success for [the] Diem government". He also indicated that the poll results were not necessarily a reflection of reality by adding that the result did not show that Diem had majority support but that he was able to control the country, effectively unchallenged. The US government was heartened by Diem's apparent ability to negate communist and other opposition.
The scholar Bernard B. Fall stated that "there is not the slightest doubt that this plebiscite was only a shade more fraudulent than most electoral tests under a dictatorship". The American journalist Stanley Karnow cited the dubious plebiscite as evidence of Diem's "mandarin mentality". Chapman said that "no amount of unilateral campaigning, anti-Bao Dai sentiment, or Confucian political restraint could explain Diem's 98 percent margin of victory in a politically heterogeneous South Vietnam. Corruption and intimidation must have played a significant role." Buttinger said that while the monarchy was "another rotten relic of Vietnam's past" and Bao Dai was "its last, unworthy representative", the fraud and intimidation was unnecessary as Diem was always going to win easily. The historian David Anderson said that the victory "was not a true representation of Diem's power or popularity. The emperor's weakness, the disarray of the political opposition, and other such factors explain his triumph",while Seth Jacobs said that "nothing demonstrated Diem's disinterest in democratic processes more vividly [than the flagrantly fraudulent referendum".
[edit] Reaction and aftermath
Three days after the vote, Diem proclaimed the creation of the Republic of Vietnam, naming himself as its president. Diem said "The October 23rd plebiscite in which [the people of South Vietnam] took such an enthusiastic part, constitutes an approval of the policies pursued thus far and at the same time augurs a whole new era for the future of our country."Diem again reiterated that he would not partake in national reunification elections, saying that they would be futile unless "true liberty" came about in the communist North Vietnam. This impressed American observers, who feared a total communist takeover.
Having claimed that the election was entirely without irregularities, the United States government hailed Diem as a new hero of the "free world". Archives of policy discussions show that the Americans were concerned more about the negative image created by Diem's autocratic and antidemocratic style among the international community, rather than the its possible effects on national cohesion.
Reaction to Diem's victory among the American press varied with geographic location. Newspapers in the Midwest hailed Diem's win as a triumph for democracy and extolled the new president as a champion of democracy. However, The New York Times said that the extreme margin of victory made "Diem's administrative control look more pervasive than is thought to be the case by a number of observers here."
Diem's victory was seen as a blow to French stature in Vietnam, as the former colonial power had helped to set up Bao Dai's State of Vietnam in 1949. They had also consistently opposed Diem and his policies, and had unsuccessfully tried to impede him. The American media regarded Diem's victory as a signal that the United States would be the only Western power in South Vietnam. Some felt that this would enable Diem to rule effectively without French hindrance, while others felt that this would leave too much of a burden on the American government.
The French media and diplomatic corps viewed the result as a humiliation. Before the poll, French officials had privately predicted that Diem would dissolve the French High Command and use a victory as justification for scrapping the national reunification elections. The French media viewed the poll as undemocratic and a plot by the Americans to sabotage any prospect of national reunification, However, France recognised the Republic of Vietnam soon after.
Diem severed economic relations with France and withdrew from the French Union after his victory. Neither the Soviet Union nor communist China overtly objected to Diem's actions in creating a new state in southern half of Vietnam. Nevertheless, by the time of Diem's deposal and assassination in 1963, France bought 46.3% of South Vietnam's exports and accounted for most of the foreign investment in the country.French cultural influences and the language remained prevalent.
In January 1956, with no legislature and constitution in place, Diem used his absolute power to dissolve the Revolutionary Council by launching police raids on the members, forcing those from the Hoa Hao and Cao Dai who had rallied to his side to go on the run. As a result, they turned against him.
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