Holiday Without Joy

There was a singularly urgent tone to President Nguyen Van Thieu's National Day radio address last week. He warned that the combination of an unruly opposition in the South and continued North Vietnamese military attacks could "lead the country into the hands of Communism." The remark was a lightly veiled threat by the President that he would no longer tolerate the massive demonstrations of South Viet Nam's aggressive, Catholic-led resistance that began in September and have since brought his government to its most serious political crisis in years.

Earlier in the week, Thieu, a Roman Catholic convert, had tried to appease his opponents by firing the notoriously corrupt commanders of three of the country's four military "corps." Among those busted was General Nguyen Vinh Nghi, of IV Corps (the Mekong Delta), who has long been suspected of pocketing the salaries of some 36,000 "phantom troops"--men who are on the payroll but nowhere else in the military. Thieu also cashiered 377 corrupt officers and dismissed four Cabinet ministers, including his cousin and confidant, Information Minister Hoang Due Nha, 32, who was responsible for censoring (and often confiscating) Saigon's Vietnamese-language newspapers.

Had these reforms come a month sooner, they might have defused the protest movement (TIME, Sept. 30), which is led by a genial, chain-smoking Catholic priest, Father Tran Huu Thanh, 59. But by last week the opposition had grown so strong that it was not about to accept cosmetic changes. Informed of the sackings, Father Thanh declared, "These are just the hors d'oeuvres."

More Protest. Next day 5,000 Catholics were scheduled to march from the suburb of Gia Dinh to central Saigon, where they would join with other protesting groups. None of them made it. In Gia Dinh, would-be paraders awoke to discover their district surrounded by a police line. They tried to march anyway. In the melee, police smashed Father Thanh's glasses and bloodied his face. By week's end scores more had been injured. Eleven opposition legislators were beaten and one was arrested. The Viet Nam Press Club was raided by police, who rounded up 28 newsmen and trucked them to jail.

Most of those arrested were released by the end of the holiday. Nonetheless, the opposition is now so embittered that further protests are likely, despite the President's surprise announcement in his address that he would not run for a third term next October. Until then though, he warned, "the government will preserve security and public order to the maximum."

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