1967 Presidential Election

The literature on the nature of the 1967 Presidential Election and its impacts on the nation-building project in the Second Republic of Vietnam has remained an under-researched topic due to the presumption that the election was staged by the military establishment to satisfy the request for setting up liberal democracies in America. However, the 1967 election yielded surprising results, and the historical narratives have provided a mixed message on the “free and fair” nature of the election. This research paper contends that the South Vietnamese citizens’ expectations and experience must be factored in the discourse. If one is familiar with the history of the Vietnam War, the support from the citizens for the ruling regime was as equally important as the support from the foreign governments in the making of the two republics. Thus, understanding the expectations and experience of South Vietnamese is a crucial step to determine the nature of the 1967 Presidential Election and assess its impact on the nation-building project in the Republic of Vietnam.