Ngo Dinh Diem and South Vietnamese leadership

¶ … Ngo Dinh Diem's government in Vietnam [...] social base of the government of Ngo Dinh Diem, and answer the questions: What were the provisions of the land reform which Diem implemented as opposed to the programs implemented by the National Liberation Front in areas under their control? Was the Diem government democratic? Why did the United States install, and later seek to remove, Diem? What did the Buddhist Crisis reveal about the Diem government?

Ngo Dinh Diem

Ngo Dinh Diem was a vehement anti-communist who initially impressed many American leaders, who then supported his as Prime Minister of the Republic of Vietnam after the French left the country. Unfortunately, Diem's government was corrupt, and socially based on his family and the Catholic refugees from the North, which angered most of the South Vietnamese. Many of his supporters touted his government as "democratic," but it was not. Diem fixed elections, installed his family in high government positions, and was generally a despotic leader - anything but democratic. He created the Catholic Can Lao organization as the only legal political party; further alienating Buddhists and others in his own country. The Buddhist Crisis clearly revealed his prejudice toward Buddhists in his country, and helped alienate him from his own people and many of his supporters in America. Many Buddhists were killed during the crisis, and it showed how he favored Roman Catholics, even if they were not South Vietnamese natives, and helped lead to the eventual coup that killed him in 1963. The United States helped install Diem as Prime Minister because they felt he could build up a strong anti-communist government in South Vietnam that could thwart Ho Chi Minh's rise in the North, but his government proved weak, ineffective, and corrupt, and so they sought to remove him. Another very important factor in Diem's growing unpopularity was his land reform policy which removed thousands of peasants from their lands into settlements that were supposedly easier to defend from Communist forces, but did not work, while the National Liberation Front's program distributed lands to needy peasants. Diem's government was corrupt, prejudiced, and had to be removed from power before he destroyed South Vietnam without the help of the Communists.