Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang - Post-independence

Post-independence

See also: 1960 South Vietnamese coup attempt and 1962 South Vietnamese Independence Palace bombing

After Vietnam gained independence in 1954, the Geneva Accords partitioned the country into a communist north and an anti-communist south, but stipulated that there were to be 300 days of free passage between the two zones. During Operation Passage to Freedom, most VNQDD members migrated to the south.

The VNQDD was deeply divided after years of communist pressure, lacked strong leadership and no longer had a coherent military presence, although they had a large presence in central Vietnam. The party's disarray was only exacerbated by the actions of autocratic President Ngo Dinh Diem, who imprisoned many of its members. Diem's administration was a "dictatorship by Catholics—A new kind of fascism", according to the title of a VNQDD pamphlet published in July 1955. The VNQDD tried to revolt against Diem in 1955 in central Vietnam. During the transition period after Geneva, the VNQDD sought to set up a new military academy in central Vietnam, but they were crushed by Ngo Dinh Can, who ran the region for his elder brother Diem, dismantled and jailed VNQDD members and leaders.

Many officers in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam felt that Diem discriminated against them because of their political leanings. Diem used the secret Catholic Can Lao Party to keep control of the army and stifle attempts by VNQDD members to rise through the ranks.

During the Diem era, the VNQDD were implicated in two failed coup attempts. In November 1960, a paratrooper revolt failed after the mutineers agreed to negotiate, allowing time for loyalists to relieve the president. Many of the officers involved had links to or were members of the VNQDD, and fled the country after the coup collapsed. In 1963, VNQDD leaders Tam and Vu Hong Khanh were among those arrested for their involvement in the plot; Tam committed suicide before the case started, and Khanh was jailed. In February 1962, two Vietnam Air Force pilots, Nguyen Van Cu—son of a prominent VNQDD leader—and Pham Phu Quoc, bombarded the Independence Palace in a bid to kill the president and his family, but their targets escaped unharmed. Diem was eventually deposed in a military coup and killed in November 1963. While the generals that led the coup were not members of the VNQDD, they sought to cultivate ARVN officers who were part of the VNQDD because of their antipathy towards Diem.

Many VNQDD members were part of the ARVN, which sought to prevent South Vietnam from being overrun by communists during the Vietnam War, and they were known for being more anti-communist than most of their compatriots.

After the fall of Diem and the execution of Can in May 1964, the VNQDD became more active in their strongholds in central Vietnam. Nevertheless, there was no coherent national leadership and groups at district and provincial level tended to operate autonomously. By 1965, their members had managed to infiltrate and take over the Peoples Action Teams (PATs), irregular paramilitary counter-insurgency forces organised by Australian Army advisers to fight the communists, and used them for their own purposes. In December, one VNQDD member had managed to turn his PAT colleagues towards the nationalist agenda, and the local party leadership in Quang Nam approached the Australians in an attempt to have the 1000-man PAT outfit formally allied to the VNQDD. The overture was rejected. The politicisation of paramilitary units worked both ways; some province chiefs used the anti-communist forces to assassinate political opponents, including VNQDD members.

In 1966, the Buddhist Uprising erupted in central Vietnam, in which some Buddhist leaders fomented civil unrest against the war, hoping to end foreign involvement in Vietnam and end the conflict through a peace deal with the communists. The VNQDD remained implacably opposed to any coexistence with the communists. Members of the VNQDD made alliances with Catholics, collected arms, and engaged in pro-war street clashes with the Buddhists, forcing elements of the ARVN to intervene to stop them.

On April 19, clashes erupted in Quang Ngai Province between the Buddhists and the VNQDD, prompting the local ARVN commander Ton That Dinh to forcibly restrain the two groups. Three days later the VNQDD accused the Buddhists of attacking their premises in Hoi An and Da Nang, while US officials reported that the VNQDD were making plans to assassinate leading Buddhists, such as the activist monk Thich Tri Quang.

The VNQDD contested their national elections of 1967, the first elections since the fall of Diem, which were rigged—Diem and his people invariably gained more than 95% of the vote and sometimes exceeded the number of registered voters. The campaign was disorganised due to a lack of infrastructure and some VNQDD candidates were not formally sanctioned by any hierarchy. The VNQDD focused on the districts in I Corps in central Vietnam where they were thought to be strong. There were 60 seats in the senate, and the six victorious tickets would see all ten of their members elected. The VNQDD entered eight tickets in the senate election, and while they totalled 15% of the national vote between them, the most of any grouping, it was diluted between the groupings; none of the tickets and thus none of the candidates were elected. This contrasted with one Catholic alliance with three tickets that won only 8% of the vote, but had all 30 candidates elected. They won nine seats in the lower house, a small minority presence, all from districts in central Vietnam, where they tended to poll between 20 and 40% in various areas. The VNQDD members made several loose alliances with Hoa Hao members of the lower house.