Indonesians 'more co-operative'

"Indonesians have a far more co-operative attitude to government than the South Vietnamese." Nicholas Turner told students last Wednesday.

He was speaking at Victoria for the Political Science Society, on "the problems of government in Indonesia and South Vietnam".

Mr. Turner has been a Reuters corespondent in South Vietnam, and is at the moment a free-lance journalist in South-East Asia.

He said that the South Vietnamese tended to unite against rather than for the government.

He said that both the Buddhists and the Viet Cong had destroyed civilian administration in the countryside, and the peasant did not think in terms of the Saigon government.

The central government was now beginning to realise that they were too far away from the people, he said.

He said that the Americans are trying to influence Saigon to reform, but that although the American principles are very noble, they are often not well advised.

Mr. Turner mentioned the selective assasination policy of the Vietcong.

"They kill both the good and the bad civil servants," he said. "The good ones to create disruption, and the bad ones to make themselves popular. They leave only the mediocre."

The military presence in government was not highly regarded, he said, because it was not sanctioned by recent or traditional experience.