Viets vote for Assembly in nationwide election

Vietnam citizens voted for a new National Assembly Sunday in the first nationwide elections since the Communist unification of the North and South in 1976. All the handpicked candidates were certain of election. A Radio Hanoi broadcast April 25 monitored in Bangkok said 538 seats were at stake.

Running unopposed were such high-ranking leaders as Prime Minister Pham Van Dong, Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach, and Communist Party General Secretary Le Duan. Western analysts predicted that the outcome, while certain to be a 100 percent landslide for government candidates, will strengthen a sense of unity among the mutually suspicious northerners and southerners.