Ngo Dinh Diem Becomes President of the Republic of Vietnam

October 26, 1955

Overview

Ngo Dinh Diem, prime minister under Bao Dai since July 1954, is elected president of South Vietnam. He displaces Bao Dai and wins with 98 percent of the vote. Observers, and later historians, note that the election is rigged, though many concede that Diem would likely have won regardless.

In spring 1955, conflict between politico-religious sects in South Vietnam increases anti-French sentiment. Leading Vietnamese nationalists begin calling for Bao Dai’s removal, associating him with French colonialism. To legally validate his status as the democratic leader of the southern government and repudiate Bao Dai’s authority, Diem sets up a referendum between himself and the current chief of state for October 1955.

On October 26, Diem proclaims that South Vietnam is now the Republic of Vietnam and he is its first president. Condemning the northern government as authoritarian, Diem blocks the national elections that the 1954 Geneva Accords mandated, making certain that Vietnam is not united under Communist rule.1

¹Jessica M. Chapman, Cauldron of Resistance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and 1950s Southern Vietnam (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), 86–102, 111, 113, 119, 123, 148–151, 163; Spencer C. Tucker, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History, (2nd edition; Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 494, 330; Edward Miller, Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 125, 140–142.