On November 8, 2018, the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies at the Munk House of Global Affairs and Public Policy hosted Professor Nu-Anh Tran for a presentation titled “How Democratic Should Vietnam Be?: Anticommunist Nationalists and the Debate on the Constitutional Transitional in the Republic of Vietnam (RVN), May-December 1955”. Professor Tran is currently serving as an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Connecticut, where she researches the histories, politics, and intellectual debates of Vietnamese nationalism, the Vietnam War, and contested political identities of anticommunist nationalists under Ngô Đình Diệm. This lecture was based on a chapter of Professor Tran’s upcoming manuscript, and accompanied by a visual presentation that displayed the concentrated timeline between May and December 1955, during which the Republic of Vietnam’s first constitutional transition and intense debate about democracy and nationalism took place. The event was chaired by Professor Nhung Tran, a faculty member at the University of Toronto and the Director of the Centre of Southeast Asian Studies.
Professor Tran began the lecture by discussing two prevalent “oddities” she observes in the literature and analysis of Western academia on the topic of politics in the Republic of Vietnam: first, the identification of an “endemic factionalism” between political parties during the time of the RVN’s constitutional transition; and second, the under-investigated rhetorical contradictions between definitions of democracy and authoritarianism within and between these political factions. American diplomatic historians after the Vietnam War often draw out the “incoherence” of politics and intellectualism that seems absent in Vietnamese ideas. Professor Tran notes that most Western-language academics have traditionally studied the political climate of the RVN through the scope of the Saigon-Washington relationship, largely driven by the availability of translated sources and records, thus creating a limited scope of analysis.
Professor Tran approached her project of studying the debate of democracy between and within political factions in the RVN by examining documents produced for and by the factions themselves. She refers to this as “new Vietnam War scholarship,” a trend which started within American diplomatic history but also includes Vietnam studies as well. Under this shift, scholars began to use Vietnamese-language sources, and many also examined the RVN more seriously than ever before. Professor Tran’s framework is structured around the regime as the main point of inquiry, using Vietnamese-language records as her sources. With this framework, Professor Tran argues that the endemic factionalism in the RVN’s constitutional transition was mainly due to the distinct agendas of various political sects, who had fundamental and irreconcilable disagreements over the definition and implementation of democracy. Through the study of Vietnamese-language sources, including memoirs, archival materials, and political newspapers and propaganda of the time period, Professor Tran argues that the endemic factionalism that goes unexplained by Western political analysis and the apparent ideological contradictions of the RVN’s political sects are two sides of the same coin. The intense conflicts and partnerships between political factions are due to irreconcilable definitions of democracy and visions of what a democratic Vietnam would look like.
Professor Tran situated the debate of democracy in a time of constitutional transition, which began in the spring of 1955, as a period of intense discussion and political maneuvering to influence the shape of government. She outlined three main participants in this debate: the Diệmists who were loyal followers of Ngô Đình Diệm and proponents of the most illiberal rhetoric; the Sect Parties which called for pluralist and representative models of government; and Phan Quang Đán, a figure whose political agenda constituted the most liberal faction. The debate of democracy is divided into three phases: from trying to articulate a shared political system, to determining who would write the constitution (October, 1955–March, 1956), to the writing and promulgation of the constitution (March–Oct 1956). The Diệmists and their allied sects argued for a hybrid regime and a mix of democracy and authoritarianism, proposing to impose severe limits on civil liberties. The Sect Parties advocated for a strong representative assembly, defining democracy as a representative democracy with the people’s approval. Diệm defined democracy as an ethical and humanistic impulse, and a continuous process rather than a rigid structure of governing. However, Diệm’s political rhetoric fundamentally called for authoritarianism. As a compromise between the Diệm’s advisers, the Diệmists eventually settled on the presidential system, and proceeded to define freedom as political loyalty.
The first phase of the debate from late April to October 1955 was defined by a debate over political systems, and it ended with a plebiscite to depose the previous leader Bảo Đại and recognize and empower Diệm in government. Through an intense propaganda campaign, and the absence of Bảo Đại himself, who was living in France and sending telegrams to rule, Diệmists won in a landslide victory. This phase of the debate also revealed that the Diệmists and the sect parties have similar agendas, which resulted in their subsequent political cooperation. The second phase of the debate began with the question of who would write the constitution, and how democratic the Republic of Vietnam should be. This phase was also signaled by the introduction of Phan Quan Đán, who called for a militant democracy with limited impositions on civil liberties, in order to protect Vietnam from extremism. Phan Quan Đán argued that representative government is meaningless without democracy. Professor Tran notes that irreconcilable political differences surfaced when the Diệmists and sect parties argued over the best way to define democracy and write the constitution. The sect parties called for a special committee and a multi-party assembly, in accordance with their advocacy for pluralism and representation. On the other hand, the Diệmists argued for the government’s right to draft the constitution. They believed the constitution should then be submitted to an elected constituent assembly, rigged to maximize Diệm’s authority. The constitution was ultimately written by Diệm’s close allies, including his brother, and subsequently submitted to a Diệmist-dominated commission. This created what Professor Tran calls an illusion of democracy, which aligned precisely with the Diệmist rhetoric of a hybrid regime. Although the battle of ideas during this phase of the debate was breaking Diệm’s control, Diệmist suppression of political opposition and the Diệm’s creation of a commission that acted as a “rubber stamp assembly” resulted in the promulgation of his constitution in October 1956.
Through studying material produced by and for the political factions at the time of constitutional transition in Vietnam, Professor Tran’s findings problematize the Western academic conclusion that endemic factionalism resulted from unreasonable disagreements and squabbling. In fact, Professor Tran argues that the political sects had their own modern political agendas, with substantive and irreconcilable differences between their respective visions for the form of democracy would take root in the Republic of Vietnam. In the audience question and answer period that followed Professor Tran’s lecture, a guest questioned the sincerity of the political agendas circulated during the constitutional transition. Professor Tran responded that the agendas of the factions were no more and no less sincere than that of any other political group. She called for scholars to reconsider their approach to studying the Republic of Vietnam by using Vietnamese-language sources and studying the ideas circulated by Vietnamese actors.
Sebastin Noor is currently serving as an Event Reporter for the South Asia section of Synergy Journal of Contemporary Asian Studies.
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