Ceremony Puts Group’s Feud on Hold

WESTMINSTER — It should have been a time to relax and celebrate. But Duc Trong Do, the newly elected president of the Vietnamese Community of Southern California, was too anxious about the new job to enjoy the moment.

His three-hour swearing-in ceremony on Saturday drew 500 people and provided a momentary truce in the political warfare that is threatening to divide Vietnamese Americans in the Southland.

But the fireworks were expected to soon resume in the struggle for leadership of the nonprofit social services organization that seeks to represent the 300,000-strong immigrant community.

In the wake of regionwide elections on Jan. 11, two groups each claimed to be the legitimate leader of the Southland’s Vietnamese Americans.

Do’s slate was elected by a landslide after the opposing group withdrew at the last minute, claiming election irregularities had tainted the process. His opponents refuse to accept Do’s election as anything other than a fraud.

The resulting impasse has split one of the most prominent Vietnamese American organizations in Southern California into two competing factions.

But Do, 57, a La Palma computer engineer, plans to forge ahead. His main goal for the next two years is to regain the community’s trust and restore the group’s credibility.

“The people will be watching us and what we do,” he said. “If we do a good job, people will put their confidence in us.”

In an earlier interview, he acknowledged that the infighting, which dates back several years, has weakened the organization and undermined much of its appeal. But he plans to address this problem by spending his first few months in office meeting with and seeking the renewed support of the 100-plus Vietnamese organizations in the community.

“I want to talk about how to reunify the community,” he said. “For a long time, people have stayed away from our organization because of the fighting. That has to change.”

An active member in the community for the last 14 years, Do is striving for a fresh start. He wants to shift the organization’s focus from insular political issues--the group is considered stridently anti-Communist--and toward broader social and cultural issues for the Vietnamese American community here. The goal is to balance the community’s needs, Do said.

“We need to be concerned about issues like crime prevention and social services. They have been put on hold for a while, because politics was No. 1,” he said.

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Do promised to work on those issues by coordinating and cooperating with local governments and with other ethnic communities. That vow got a symbolic boost from the inauguration itself, held at the Westminster Civic Center and attended by two dozen local politicians and community groups.

But Do still faces the huge obstacle presented by outgoing President Ban Bui and his supporters, who maintain that the election was invalid. Bui has sent a letter to the California secretary of state’s office asserting that the community elections were marred by “unfairness, lack of impartiality and multiple errors.”

The organization, created in the late 1980s to act as a unifying force within the Vietnamese community, has been mired in petty politics for much of that time.

The latest controversy has been no exception. Critics have maintained that Bui, a two-term president, was behind efforts to derail the election process as a way to cling to power. Bui’s wife was among the 15-member slate of candidates that withdrew just hours before balloting began. Her candidacy was seen by Do’s group as a front for an outgoing president who couldn’t run again under the community’s bylaws.

But Bui retorts that he is merely carrying out the mandate given by the community. In the January election, a group of voters had complained that the election organizing committee was favoring Do’s group and being unfair in how it enforced election rules.

One day before the election, Bui held a meeting at which several hundred community members urged a three- to six-month postponement of the balloting. But the election committee vowed to press ahead. Bui’s wife’s group withdrew from the election in protest.

More than 5,000 voters turned out anyway and voted overwhelmingly for Do’s group.

The inauguration Saturday was considered the official transition of power, said Ha Son Tran, vice president of the election organizing committee. Attendees included leaders from the local religious community, the media and Vietnamese leaders from surrounding regions.

“This is the will of the people,” Tran said. “Today shows the support from the various corners of the community. Mr. Bui needs to accept that.”

Nevertheless, Bui claims he is following the voters’ will and has made plans to hold an election in June.

“I’m not doing this for myself,” Bui said. “I just want this to be a fair and clean election. I will stay to make sure that happens, and then I will step down. I don’t want to stay any longer than that.”

The battle is far from over, and both groups say they are considering legal action.