Word: ky
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...Supreme Court action put Ky on the ballot whether he intended to run or not. But at week's end, Ky announced that he would defer a final decision. Nevertheless, it was understood that he intended to call for a three-month postponement of the election. He was also expected to propose that both he and Thieu resign, and that Nguyen Van Huyen, president of the Senate, become Acting President in order to organize a new election. For the moment, only one thing seemed certain: despite all the maneuvering to restore the appearance of a real race, the election...
...popular Big Minh, Thieu's only real rival for the presidency, abruptly pulled out of the campaign, charging that the election was a "disgusting farce" blatantly rigged by the Presidential Palace. The only other potential rival, Ky, had already been shut out-at least "provisionally"-by a highly restrictive election law. Then, after a palace showdown between Bunker and Thieu following Big Minh's withdrawal, the nine justices of South Viet Nam's Supreme Court met and ruled that Ky could qualify as a candidate after all. Ostensibly, what had started as a three-man campaign...
...Days. Even if Ky were to throw all his energies into a campaign, such a race could only have a grotesquely one-sided result. Ky's support is mainly among the military, northern Catholic refugees, and some Buddhists, plus whatever votes he might pick up from Minh's anti-Thieu supporters. Deprived of any chance of unseating Thieu by political means, South Viet Nam's voters could well turn to other methods. Last week, a crippled war veteran doused himself with gasoline and set himself ablaze on a downtown street to protest Ky's earlier provisional...
...electoral debacle pointed up the U.S.'s declining leverage in Saigon. The U.S. embassy in Saigon badly underestimated what Ky acidly describes as Thieu's "excessive attachment to power"-a syndrome that is not unknown to Ky and Minh, who have both held power with U.S. backing in the past. The flaw in the U.S. thinking was that no one foresaw how far Thieu was willing to go to ensure his own reelection...
...that the law was aimed merely at winnowing out the frivolous candidates; after all, there were no fewer than eleven hopefuls in the 1967 election, which Thieu won with a bare 35% of the vote. When it finally dawned that the man Thieu most wanted to winnow out was Ky, alarm spread through the U.S. embassy. Bunker repeatedly warned Thieu that it might look bad all round if the Vice President were squeezed out of the race. But when the Aug. 4 filing deadline came around, Thieu sat quietly while the Supreme Court ruled out Ky for lack of sufficient...