George Ginsburgs

Local Government and Administration in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam since 1954 (Part 2)

Despite the noticeable progress registered since 1954 in the reorganisation of a civilian administrative structure in North Vietnam, after three years much still remained to be done. In particular, while the regime had, from the very start, repeatedly pledged itself to hold popular elections at the earliest possible opportunity to all organs of government, these promises had never been kept, probably out of a desire not to upset the delicate political balance between North and South engineered by the Geneva agreements and to give the South a convenient pretext for repudiating them. But, when the deadline set at Geneva for a referendum in both halves of the divided land on the question of re-unification had expired and it became apparent to Hanoi that it could no longer hope to gain control of South Vietnam at the polls, the last reason for postponing unilateral action in the North vanished. By 1957, official sources in the D.R.V. were openly acknowledging that the situation with regard to elections had indeed become anomalous and even admitting that the state apparatus had not yet become sufficiently strong; in many places organs of peoples power had not been re-elected for a long time. In some areas peoples Councils have almost not been functioning at all or have functioned only formally. Some administrative committees were being appointed by higher organs, whereas they had to be elected by peoples Councils.