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Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011  an opposition party which would coalesce the majority of the opposition into one organization, of helping this new party adopt a platform which contains sound ideas for building national entities which the Vietnamese people would find worth defending against the Communists, and of strongly influencing it to play the role of loyal opposition while President Diem is in power and the nation is in such great danger.

This work with the opposition is a matter of grave urgency. Unless the energies of the malcontents, the frustrated, the patriots on the outs are quickly channeled into political works, they are going to explode into  political work. This opposition situation in Saigon-Cholon is at the bursting point, and there is no safety valve. When it next blows, and if Diem cannot cope with it, the SiagonSaigon [sic] political scene has all the makings of turning into anarchy. It can happen, and soon.

I saw a number of opposition people, officials of various parties, members of the National Assembly, and disgruntled members of President Diem's administration. They eagerly told me how they were criticizing Diem's actions more and more openly. I asked them what their own program was, other than to seize power for, themselves or to have me pat them on the head for being critics. Few of them had any sensible ideas. I told them they'd better get busy scratching for a better program themselves or else I could only assume that they were being disloyal or treasonous in a time of great national danger. I trust that other Americans talking to, these oppositionists will do the same or we will be inviting disaster by listening to this and keeping mum when we should be working like beavers to turn it into constructive channels.

If we can get most of the oppositionists meeting with each other to try to put together a platform they can all agree on, and can protect such work so that it can be done fairly openly, we will have an extremely useful political action in motion. It will absorb months of political energies which otherwise will go towards the solution of armed overthrow. A major opposition party. once it starts becoming a reality will tend to make the several governmental groupings such as the Can Lao, MNR, and Nhu's labor organizations start coalescing into one stronger group. In this way, we can help promote a two-party system which can afford to be surfaced, end much of the present clandestine political structures, and give sound encouragement to the development of new political leaders. There are many fine younger patriots who need this sort of a healthy, political atmosphere to develop in, if we ever expect Vietnam to have a real future. Rh