National Social Democratic Front


The National Social Democratic Front, later named Social Democratic Alliance, was a South Vietnamese political party, born by federation of different groups, united for their anti-communism. Its chairman was Lt. Gen. Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, leader of South Vietnam in 1965–1975.

History

The party was founded as Democratic Party by Nguyễn Văn Thiệu in 1967. It was not linked with its North Vietnam namesake, aligned with Viet Minh and Communists.
The Democratic Party, expressing farmers, workers and small traders, participated to presidential election of 1967, supporting President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu and his military rule. The party also adopted the flag of the Vanguard Youth, a youth organization that participated to August Revolution in 1945 against French colonial rule.
As the Vietnam War flared up, the Democratic Party tried to built a coalition with other anti-communist parties. In 1969, the Democrats finally dissolved themselves into a new subject, the National Social Democratic Front. The party became quickly a federation of several organizations and parties, such as: persecuted Roman Catholics who fled from North Vietnam; the Vietnam Republic Veterans Association, who sympathyzed with military rule; the Vietnamese Kuomintang, ideologically opposed to communists like its Chinese counterpart; the Democratic Socialist Party, who rejected communists' atheism for Buddhist socialism; the Nationalist Party of Greater Vietnam, that desired to reunify Vietnam but not under communists; the Personalist Party, the heir of Can Lao Party and the Peasants' and Workers' Party, supporting rural interests and opposite to Viet Cong's guerrilla.
The parties' federation was functional during Nguyễn Văn Thiệu's tenure as President and changed its name to "Social Democratic Alliance" in 1973. However, with the Vietnamization policy adopted by U.S. President Richard Nixon, South Vietnam inexorably started its collapse. The Paris Peace Accords of 1973 was a turning point in the war, causing the end of American intervention in Vietnam. Despite the peace agreement between communist North Vietnam and capitalist South Vietnam, in 1975 North Vietnam broke the peace and started the takeover of South Vietnam. Since the United States refused another intervention, South Vietnam collapsed after the Fall of Saigon, causing the reunification of Vietnam under communist rule.
Many members of the Front and South Vietnamese government were executed by the new administration, but others fled from Vietnam. In 1981, many former members of the Front created the Democratic Alliance for Vietnam, a pluralist extra-parliamentary opposition group based in California who want restore freedom and democracy in Vietnam.

Prominent members

Presidential elections