Ngô Đình Diệm: Difference between revisions

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Diem refused to carry out the 1954 Geneva Accords, which had called for free elections to be held throughout Vietnam in 1956 in order to establish a national government. With the south torn by dissident groups and political factions, Diem established an autocratic regime that was staffed at the highest levels by members of his own family.

The country of Vietnam, which held a referendum in South Vietnam, in 1955 deposed Head of State Bao Dai and appointed Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem as head of state. The referendum was accused of fraud as in Saigon, Ngo Dinh Diem got 605,025 votes while the country had only around 450,000 registered voters.

Diem, assisted by U.S. military and economic aid, was able to resettle hundreds of thousands of refugees from North Vietnam in the south, but his own Catholicism and the preference he showed for fellow Roman Catholics made him unacceptable to Buddhists, who were an overwhelming majority in South Vietnam. Diem never fulfilled his promise of land reforms, and during his rule communist influence and appeal grew among southerners as the communist-inspired [[Việt Cộng]], launched an increasingly intense guerrilla war against his government. The military tactics Diem used against the insurgency were heavy-handed and ineffective and served only to deepen his government’s unpopularity and isolation.

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 Diem refused to carry out the 1954 Geneva Accords, which had called for free elections to be held throughout Vietnam in 1956 in order to establish a national government. With the south torn by dissident groups and political factions, Diem established an autocratic regime that was staffed at the highest levels by members of his own family.
+The country of Vietnam, which held a referendum in South Vietnam, in 1955 deposed Head of State Bao Dai and appointed Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem as head of state. The referendum was accused of fraud as in Saigon, Ngo Dinh Diem got 605,025 votes while the country had only around 450,000 registered voters.
 Diem, assisted by U.S. military and economic aid, was able to resettle hundreds of thousands of refugees from North Vietnam in the south, but his own Catholicism and the preference he showed for fellow Roman Catholics made him unacceptable to Buddhists, who were an overwhelming majority in South Vietnam. Diem never fulfilled his promise of land reforms, and during his rule communist influence and appeal grew among southerners as the communist-inspired [[Việt Cộng]], launched an increasingly intense guerrilla war against his government. The military tactics Diem used against the insurgency were heavy-handed and ineffective and served only to deepen his government’s unpopularity and isolation.