Establishment of the Republic of Vietnam In South Vietnam, a referendum was scheduled for 23 October 1955 to determine the future direction of the south, in which the people would choose Diệm or Bảo Đại as the leader of
South Vietnam. Diệm, with the support of his brother Ngô Đình Nhu and the Cần Lao Party, used an avid propaganda campaign to destroy Bảo Đại's reputation and garner support for Diem. Supporters of Bảo Đại were not allowed to campaign, and were physically attacked by Nhu's workers. For example, only 450,000 voters were registered in Saigon, but 605,025 were said to have voted for Diệm. The 1954 Geneva Accords prescribed elections to reunify the country in 1956. Diệm refused to hold these elections, claiming that a free election was not possible in the North and that since the previous State of Vietnam had not signed the accords, they were not bound by it. Diệm claimed his government had the legal right to refuse the general elections, because the State of Vietnam had been recognized by France as a fully sovereign state within the French Union on 4 June 1954 and the country became independent from the treaties signed by France. According to historian
Keith Taylor, Diệm's rejection of the Geneva Accords was a way of objecting to the French colonization of Vietnam, while at the same time expressing his opinion of Bảo Đại, and the establishment of the First Republic of Vietnam served to assert Vietnamese independence from France. At the same time, the first Constitution of the Republic of Vietnam was promulgated. According to the Constitution, the President was granted an inordinate amount of power, and his governing style became increasingly authoritarian over time. Diệm's rule was
authoritarian and
nepotistic. His most trusted official was his brother Nhu, leader of the primary pro-Diệm party, the Cần Lao Party. Nhu was an
opium addict and admirer of
Adolf Hitler. He modeled the Cần Lao secret police's marching style and torture styles on Nazi methodology. Cẩn, another brother, was put in charge of the former Imperial City of Huế. Although neither Cẩn nor Nhu held any official role in the government, they ruled their regions of South Vietnam absolutely, commanding private armies and secret police forces. Diệm's youngest brother Luyện was appointed Ambassador to the United Kingdom. His elder brother, Ngô Đình Thục, was
Archbishop of Huế. Despite this, Thuc lived in the Presidential Palace, along with Nhu, Nhu's wife, and Diệm. Diệm was
nationalistic, devoutly Catholic,
anti-Communist, and preferred the philosophies of
personalism and
Confucianism. Diệm's rule was also pervaded by family corruption. Cẩn was widely believed to be involved in several illegal operations, namely the illegal smuggling of
rice to North Vietnam on the black market, the opium trade via
Laos, in monopolizing the
cinnamon trade, and amassing a fortune in foreign banks. With Nhu, Cẩn competed for U.S. contracts and rice trade. Thuc, the most powerful religious leader in the country, was allowed to solicit "voluntary contributions to the Church" from Saigon businessmen, which was likened to "tax notices". Thuc also used his position to acquire farms, businesses, urban real estate, rental property, and rubber plantations in the name of the Catholic Church. He also used
Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) personnel to work on his timber and construction projects. The Nhus amassed a fortune by running numbers and lottery rackets, manipulating currency and extorting money from Saigon businesses, while Luyen became a multimillionaire by speculating in
Piastres and
Pounds on the currency exchange using inside government information. However, Miller wrote that Diệm also clamped down on corruption. South Vietnam was divided into colonial-era provinces, of which governors enjoyed sweeping powers and firmly controlled local administrations, creating a problem of corruption and cronyism. The governors were seen as petty tyrants, and Diệm launched corruption probes while also replacing many of the governors. However, starting in 1954, the political turmoil prevented him from taking further measures. The MSUG, an American advisory body created to aid the Diệm's regime, recommended that Diệm centralize power by abolishing local administrations and reforming the existing ones into much larger "areas", with much less power and no financial autonomy. Diệm objected to abolishing the position of province chiefs, arguing that only local governments could address "the needs of local people" as he believed that requiring fiscal self-sufficiency from the local governments was key to creating the "ethos of mutual responsibility" – a key concept in Diệm's communitarian interpretation of democracy. The Cần Lao Party played a key role in Diệm's regime, often acting as much more than a tool of political organization. Initially, the party acted secretly based on a network of cells, and each member only knew the identities of a few other members. When necessary, the Party could assume the role of the government. After 1954, the existence of the party was recognized, but its activities were hidden from public view. In the early 1950s, Diệm and Nhu used the party to mobilize support for Diệm's political movements. According to the Republic of Vietnam decree 116/BNV/CT, the Cần Lao Party was established on 2 September 1954. Personalism, as part of
Person Dignity Theory, officially became the basic doctrine of Diệm's regime, reflected in the Constitution's preface, which declared that "Building Politics, Economy, Society, Culture for the people based on respecting Personalism".
Elections |left According to Miller, democracy, to Diệm, was rooted in his dual identity as Confucian and Catholic, and was associated with
communitarianism and the doctrine of Personalism. He defined democracy as "a social ethos based on certain sense of moral duty", not in the U.S. sense of "political right" or political pluralism and in the context of an Asian country like Vietnam, Confucian and Catholic values were relevant to deal with contemporary problems in politics, governance, and social change. In this sense, Diệm was not a reactionary mandarin lacking an interest in democracy as he has been portrayed by some scholars. His way of thinking about democracy became a key factor of his approach to political and administrative reform. Diệm argued that post-colonial Vietnam must be a democratic country, but noted that Vietnamese democracy should develop out of its precolonial models, rather than European and American concepts, arguing that Vietnamese "institutions, customs and the principles underlying them are democratic facts." Researching the
Nguyễn dynasty, Diệm asserted that the moral norm of Nguyễn-era Vietnam was that it was founded "on the people", following the Confucian concept of
Mandate of Heaven; people could and often did withdraw their support from unpopular monarchs, causing their downfall. Diệm considered it an "indigenous Vietnamese democratic tradition" and wished to make it the basis of democracy that would emerge in Vietnam. Diệm's ideology of personalism was largely influenced by the Confucian notion that self-improvement meant cooperation with one's local community and society at large; he thought that there is a tension between individual's personal ambitions and community's ethos of mutual responsibility. Inspired by the writings of Catholic philosopher
Emmanuel Mounier, Diệm considered his ideology of personalism a "third way" of communitarianism, presenting an alternative to both
individualism and
collectivism, insisting that democracy couldn't be realised "by drafting and promulgating documents and regulations", but that civil liberties granted by democratic regime to its citizens should serve "collective social improvement", serving each person's community rather than the individual itself. In 1955, Diệm wrote that "democracy is primarily a state of mind, a way of living that respects the human person, both with regard to ourselves and with regard to others" and that "more than any other form of government, democracy demands that we all display wisdom and virtue in our dealings with each other." In 1956, Diem added that democracy had to foster a feeling of community and mutual responsibility, arguing that respect for democracy lays in "decency in social relations", thus defining Vietnamese democracy as inherently communitarian and not individualist. In summer and fall of 1955, Diệm's administration had to decide the fate of the former emperor Bảo Đại. Bảo Đại was initially supposed to remain the head of state until the National Assembly elections, but Diệm's cabinet decided to decide the monarch's fate through a referendum. Miller highlights that despite the popular belief that the referendum was put forward by
Edward Lansdale, it was Diệm who decided to organise the referendum as a way to burnish his democratic credentials and attempt to realise his democratic ideas. While the monarch was highly unpopular given his collaboration with the French colonial regime, the new government committed to further diminishing Đại's reputation with aggressive smear campaign and large pro-rallies. Additionally, the referendum itself was considered non-secret, given that the voters were given ballots with the photos of Diệm and Bảo Đại on it and were supposed to tear it in half and deposit the slice with their preferred candidate into the box – this made one's choice visible to everyone. Miller notes that the referendum reveals the eccentric nature of Diệm's understanding of democracy – in the sense of
political pluralism, the vote appeared inherently authoritarian; but to Diệm his margin appeared legitimate, as he described democracy as "state of mind" in which the people elect the morally superior leader. Thus Diệm was "adamant that the outcome was entirely consistent with his view of democracy as the citizenry's embrace of a common moral ethos". On 4 March 1956, the elections for the first National Assembly were held. These elections were considerably more free and fair than the referendum, and some governmental candidates would highly contest with independents and oppositionist candidates for their seats, according to Miller. On this occasion, non-government candidates were allowed to campaign and the election had an atmosphere of legitimate pluralism, but the government retained the right to ban candidates deemed to be linked to the communists or other 'rebel' groups, and campaign material was screened. However, Miller notes that in some districts the opposition candidates withdrew due to police intimidation and military presence. Surprisingly, instead of letting the draft constitution be created by a handpicked commission, Diệm dissolved it and had the constitution be made by the National Assembly deputies instead. The government hailed the process as democratic and transparent, given how the Assembly meetings were open and media presence was allowed; the National Revolutionary Movement dominated the council, but a handful of opposition figures had won seats as well.
Rural development Diệm hoped to develop a national, revolutionary spirit within the citizens of South Vietnam as well as a vibrant communal democracy and an independent, non-communist Vietnam. He saw the peasantry as the key to this nation-building as he believed the peasantry was more likely to put the country before their own self interest in a spirit of volunteerism. A Special Commissariat for Civic Action was established to extend the reach of the Saigon government into rural areas and to help create 'model villages' to show rural peasants that the South Vietnamese government was viable as well as allowing citizen volunteers, and experts, to help these communities develop and tie them to the nation. The Special Commissariat for Civic Action was considered a practical tool of Diệm's government to serve "the power vacuum", and be a force of influence for Diệm's government, in the rural countryside following the departure of Việt Minh cadres after the Geneva Accords (1954). in
Tuy Hoa, 1966.
Land Reform In South Vietnam, especially in
Mekong Delta, landholdings in rural areas were concentrated in small number of rich landlord families. Thus, it was urgent to implement land reform in South Vietnam. Diệm had two attempts to control the excesses of the land tenancy system by promulgating the Ordinance 2 on 28 January 1955 to reduce land rent between 15% and 25% of the average harvest and the Ordinance 7 on 5 February 1955 to protect the rights of tenants on new and abandoned land and enhancing cultivation. In October 1956, with the urge from
Wolf Ladejinsky, Diệm's personal adviser on agrarian reform, Diệm promulgated a more serious ordinance on the land reform, in which he proclaimed a "land to the tiller" (not to be confused with other
Land reform in South Vietnam like
Nguyễn Văn Thiệu's later 'Land to the Tiller" program) program to put a relatively high 100 hectares limit on rice land and 15 hectares for ancestral worship. However, this measure had no real effect because many landlords evaded the redistribution by transferring the property to the name of family members. Besides, during the 1946–54 war against the French Union forces, the Việt Minh had gained control of parts of southern Vietnam, initiated land reform, confiscated landlords' land and distributed it to the peasants. Additionally, the ceiling limit was more than 30 times that allowed in Japan,
South Korea, and
Taiwan, and the 370,000 acres (1,500 km2) of the Catholic Church's landownings in Vietnam were exempted. The political, social, and economic influences of the land reform was minimal. From 1957 to 1963, only 50 percent of expropriated land was redistributed, and only 100,000 out of approximately one million tenant farmers in South Vietnam benefited from the reform. Farmers were required to pay for land they acquired under the program, and the program was riddled with corruption and inefficiency. Support for the Vietcong was driven by resentment of Diệm's reversal of Viet Minh land reforms in the countryside. The Viet Minh had confiscated large private landholdings, reduced rents and debts, and leased communal lands, mostly to poorer peasants. Diệm brought the landlords back, people who had been farming land for years had to return it to landlords and pay years of back rent.
Marilyn B. Young wrote that "The divisions within villages reproduced those that had existed against the French: 75% support for the Vietcong, 20% trying to remain neutral and only 5% firmly pro-Saigon government".
Resettlement According to Miller, Diệm, who described tenant farmers as a "real proletariat" and pursued the goal of "middle peasantization", was not a beholden to large landowners, instead of vigorously implementing Land Reform, Diệm had his own vision in Vietnamese rural development based on resettlement, which focused on redistribution of people (rather than land), could reduce overpopulation and lead to many benefits in socio-economic transformation as well as military affairs and security, especially anti-communist infiltration. Moreover, Diệm was ambitious to envision resettlement as a tactic to practice the government's ideological goals. The differences between the US and Diệm over nation building in countryside shaped the clashes in their alliance. The
Cái Sắn resettlement project: In late 1955, with the help of US material support and expertise, Diệm's government implemented the project Cái Sắn in
An Giang province, which aimed to resettle one hundred thousand northern refugees.
Land Development program (
Khu dinh điền): In early 1957, Diệm started a new program called the
Land Development to relocate poor inhabitants, demobilized soldiers, and minority ethnic groups in central and southern Vietnam into abandoned or unused land in Mekong Delta and Central Highlands, and cultivating technological and scientific achievements to transform South Vietnam and ensure security and prevent communist infiltration. Diệm believed that the program would help improve civilians' lives, teach them the values of being self-reliant and hard working. At the end of 1963, the program had built more than two hundred settlements for a quarter of a million people. Nevertheless, the lacks of conditions in these areas along with the corruption and mercilessness of local officials failed the program.
Counter-insurgency During his presidency, Diệm strongly focused on his central concern: internal security to protect his regime as well as maintain order and social change: staunch anti-subversion and anti-rebellion policies. After the Bình Xuyên was defeated and the Hòa Hảo and Cao Đài were subdued, Diệm concentrated on his most serious threat: the communists. Diệm's main measures for internal security were threats, punishment and intimidation. His regime countered North Vietnamese and communist subversion (including the assassination of over 450 South Vietnamese officials in 1956) by launching campaigns known as "Denounce the Communists". Tens of thousands of suspected communists were detained in "political re-education centers". The North Vietnamese government claimed that over 65,000 individuals were imprisoned and 2,148 killed in the process by November 1957. In a 1961 letter to the
International Control Commission, North Vietnamese general
Võ Nguyên Giáp stated that each "Denounce the Communists" campaign had resulted in hundreds arrested, wounded or killed, sometimes thousands. According to historian
Gabriel Kolko, from 1955 to by the end of 1958, 40,000 political prisoners had been jailed and many were executed. Historian
Guenter Lewy considers such figures exaggerated, stating that there were only 35,000 prisoners in total in South Vietnam during the period. By the end of 1959, Diệm was able to entirely control each family and the communists had to suffer their "darkest period" in their history. Membership declined by two thirds and they had almost no power in the countryside of South Vietnam. Diệm's repression extended beyond communists to anti-communist dissidents and anti-corruption
whistleblowers. In 1956, after the "Anti-Communist Denunciation Campaign", Diệm issued Ordinance No. 6, which placed anyone who was considered a threat to the state and public order in jail or house arrest. Nevertheless, Diệm's hard policies led to fear and resentment in many quarters in South Vietnam and negatively affected his relations with the US in terms of counter-insurgent methods. On 22 February 1957, when Diệm delivered a speech at an agricultural fair in
Buôn Ma Thuột, a communist named
Hà Minh Tri attempted to assassinate the president. He approached Diệm and fired a pistol from close range, but missed, hitting the Secretary for Agrarian Reform's left arm. The weapon then jammed and security overpowered Tri before he was able to fire another shot. Diệm was unmoved by the incident. The assassination attempt was the desperate response of the communists to Diệm's relentless anti-communist policies.
Religious policies and the Buddhist crisis South Vietnam was often portrayed as having a Buddhist majority, comprising 70–90% of the population. These figures, reported by foreign journalists, were overestimated, as Westerners commonly mistook
folk religion for Buddhism. The actual number of Buddhists was much smaller, at most about 27%. Diệm was widely regarded by "orthodox" historians as having pursued pro-Catholic policies that antagonized many Buddhists. Specifically, the government was regarded as being biased towards Catholics in public service and military promotions, as well as the allocation of land and business favors. According to
Marvin Gettleman, Diệm once told a high-ranking officer, forgetting that he was a Buddhist, "Put your Catholic officers in sensitive places. They can be trusted." Some Catholic priests ran their own private armies. Słowiak argues that Diệm's favoritism towards Catholics was not a sign of corruption and nepotism, but that it was necessary for Diệm to favor people loyal towards him, given the precarious internal situation of Vietnam. The land owned by the Catholic Church was exempt from land reform. Under Diệm, the Catholic Church enjoyed special exemptions in property acquisition, and in 1959, Diệm dedicated his country to the
Virgin Mary.
David Halberstam accused the Diệm government of placing the newly constructed
Hue and Dalat universities under Catholic authority to foster a Catholic-skewed academic environment. Portrayals by Western media at the time were distorted, as Vietnamese Buddhism in fact flourished under Diệm's First Republic. Diệm had contributed to Buddhist communities in South Vietnam by giving them permission to carry out activities that were banned by the French and supported money for Buddhist schools, ceremonies, and building more pagodas. Among the eighteen members of Diệm's cabinet, there were five Catholics, five
Confucians, and eight Buddhists, including a vice-president and a foreign minister. Only three of the top nineteen military officials were Catholics. The regime's relations with the United States worsened during 1963, as discontent among South Vietnam's Buddhist majority was simultaneously heightened. In May, in the heavily Buddhist central city of Huếthe seat of Diệm's elder brother as the local Catholic archbishopthe Buddhist majority was prohibited from displaying
Buddhist flags during
Vesak celebrations commemorating the
birth of Gautama Buddha when the government cited a regulation prohibiting the display of non-government flags. A few days earlier, however, white and yellow Catholic
papal flags flew at the 25th anniversary commemoration of Ngô Đình Thục's elevation to the rank of bishop. According to Miller, Diệm then proclaimed the flag embargo because he was annoyed with the commemoration for Thục. However, the ban on religious flags led to a protest led by
Thích Trí Quang against the government, which was suppressed by Diệm's forces, and unarmed civilians were killed in
the clash. Diệm and his supporters blamed the Việt Cộng for the deaths and claimed the protesters were responsible for the violence. Although the provincial chief expressed sorrow for the killings and offered to compensate the victims' families, they resolutely denied that government forces were responsible for the killings and blamed the Viet Cong. According to Diệm, it was the communists who threw a grenade into the crowd. The Buddhists pushed for a five-point agreement: freedom to fly religious flags, an end to arbitrary arrests, compensation for the Huế victims, punishment for the officials responsible, and
religious equality. Diệm then banned demonstrations and ordered his forces to arrest those who engaged in civil disobedience. On 3 June 1963, protesters attempted to march towards the
Từ Đàm pagoda. Six waves of ARVN tear gas and attack dogs failed to disperse the crowds. Finally, brownish-red liquid chemicals
were doused on praying protesters, resulting in 67 being hospitalized for chemical injuries. A curfew was subsequently enacted. ,
Thích Quảng Đức, set himself on fire in the middle of a busy Saigon intersection in protest of Diệm's policies|left|272x272px The turning point came in June when a
Buddhist monk,
Thích Quảng Đức, set himself on fire in the middle of a busy Saigon intersection in protest of Diệm's policies; photos of this event were disseminated around the world, and for many people these pictures came to represent the failure of Diệm's government. A number of other monks publicly
self-immolated, and the US grew increasingly frustrated with the unpopular leader's public image in both Vietnam and the United States. Diệm used his conventional anti-communist argument, identifying the dissenters as communists. As demonstrations against his government continued throughout the summer, the special forces loyal to Diệm's brother, Nhu, conducted an August raid of the
Xá Lợi pagoda in Saigon. Pagodas were vandalized, monks beaten, and the cremated remains of Quảng Đức, which included his heart, a religious relic, were confiscated.
Simultaneous raids were carried out across the country, with the Từ Đàm pagoda in Huế looted, the statue of
Gautama Buddha demolished, and the body of a deceased monk confiscated. When the populace came to the defense of the monks, the resulting clashes saw 30 civilians killed and 200 wounded. In all 1,400 monks were arrested, and some thirty were injured across the country. The United States indicated its disapproval of Diệm's administration when ambassador
Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. visited the pagoda. No further mass Buddhist protests occurred during the remainder of Diệm's rule.
Madame Nhu Trần Lệ Xuân, Nhu's wife, inflamed the situation by mockingly applauding the suicides, stating, "If the Buddhists want to have another barbecue, I will be glad to supply the gasoline." The pagoda raids stoked widespread public disquiet in
Saigon. Students at Saigon University boycotted classes and rioted, which led to arrests, imprisonments, and the closure of the university; this was repeated at Huế University. When high school students demonstrated, Diệm arrested them as well; over 1,000 students from Saigon's leading high school, most of them children of Saigon civil servants, were sent to re-education camps, including, reportedly, children as young as five, on charges of anti-government graffiti. Diệm's foreign minister
Vũ Văn Mẫu resigned, shaving his head like a Buddhist monk in protest. When he attempted to leave the country on a religious pilgrimage to India, he was detained and kept under house arrest. At the same time that the
Buddhist crisis was taking place, a French diplomatic initiative to end the war had been launched. The initiative was known to historians as the "Maneli affair", after
Mieczysław Maneli, the Polish Commissioner to the International Control Commission who served as an intermediary between the two Vietnams. In 1963, North Vietnam was suffering its worst drought in a generation. Maneli conveyed messages between Hanoi and Saigon negotiating a declaration of a ceasefire in exchange for South Vietnamese rice being traded for North Vietnamese coal. On 2 September 1963, Maneli met with Nhu at his office in the Gia Long Palace, a meeting that Nhu leaked to the American columnist
Joseph Alsop, who revealed it to the world in his "A Matter of Fact" column in the
Washington Post. Nhu's purpose in leaking the meeting was to blackmail the United States with the message that if Kennedy continued to criticize Diệm's handling of the Buddhist crisis, Diệm would reach an understanding with the Communists. There have been many interpretations of the Buddhist crisis and the immolation of Thích Quảng Đức in 1963. Relating the events to the larger context of
Vietnamese Buddhism in the 20th century and looking at the interactions between Diệm and Buddhist groups, the Buddhist protests during Diệm's regime were not only the struggles against discrimination in religious practices and religious freedom, but also the resistance of Vietnamese Buddhism to Diệm's
nation-building policies centered by a
personalist revolution that Buddhists considered a threat to the revival of Vietnamese Buddhist power. Until the end of his life, Diệm, along with his brother Nhu still believed that their nation-building was successful and they could resolve the Buddhist crisis in their own way, like what they had done with the Hinh crisis in 1954 and the struggle with the Bình Xuyên in 1955. Jerema Słowiak of
Jagiellonian University notes that the American media coverage skewed the true background of the conflict, spreading the "narrative of evil dictator Diệm oppressing good, peaceful Buddhists". Because of this, Diệm was considered a brutal and corrupt dictator in the United States at the time of his assassination. The issues Diệm paid more attention in foreign affairs were: the Geneva Accords, the withdrawal of the French, international recognition, the cultivation of the legitimacy of the RVN and the relations with the United States, Laos (good official relations) and
Cambodia (complicated relations, especially due to border disputes and minority ethnicities), and especially North Vietnam. Concerning relations with the US, although Diệm admitted the importance of the US-RVN alliance, he perceived that the US's assistance to the RVN was primarily serving its own national interest, rather than the RVN's national interest. Taylor adds that Diệm's distrust of the US grew because of its Laotian policy, which gave North Vietnam access to South Vietnam's border through southern Laos. Diệm also feared the escalation of American military personnel in South Vietnam, which threatened his nationalist credentials and the independence of his government. In early 1963, the Ngô brothers even revised their alliance with the US. Moreover, they also disagreed with the US on how to best react to the threat from North Vietnam. While Diệm believed that before opening the political system for the participation of other political camps, military, and security matters should be taken into account; the US wanted otherwise and was critical of Diệm's clientelistic government, where political power based on his family members and trusted associates. The Buddhist crisis in South Vietnam decreased American confidence in Diệm, and eventually led to the coup d'état sanctioned by the US. Ultimately, nation-building politics "shaped the evolution and collapse of the US-Diem alliance". The different visions in the meanings of concepts – democracy, community, security, and social change – were substantial, and were a key cause of the strains throughout their alliance. ==Coup and assassination==