Nguyen Ngoc Tho

Nguyen Ngoc Tho (1908-?) was Vice-President of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) under Ngo Dinh Diem and the first Prime Minister, for a time after Diem's overthrow in the Vietnam War, Buddhist crisis and military coup of 1963. Of the Buddhist majority rather than Diem's Catholic minority, while he did not command major personal forces, he had important roles in brokering arrangements with the politically powerful Buddhist.

Pre-1963 coup
Under Diem, Tho had the responsibility, in the fall of 1956, for carrying out a Diem-initiated program to Vietnamize ethnic Chinese resident in South Vietnam. In the fall Approximately 1,000,000 Chinese-identified people of Vietnam, who dominated much of the economy. The order barred "foreigners", including Chinese, from 11 kinds of businesses, and demanded the half-million Vietnamese-born men, known as "uncles", "Vietnamize", including changing their names to a Vietnamese form.

After the coup
As well as being Prime Minister under the military-controlled Provisional Government, he was Minister of Finance and National Economy. The coup government under a junta led by Dương Văn Minh. On January 29, 1964, Nguyen Khanh ousted Minh's MRC in a quick coup, and disbanded the civilian government; Tho retired.