PAKISTAN: How to Get Elected President

In his 14 months in power, Field Marshal Mohammed Ayub Khan had done much to retrieve Pakistan from the misrule of her squabbling, corrupt politicians. But some of his supporters, including Foreign Minister Manzur Qadir, who is an able constitutional lawyer, were disturbed that all this progress should take place while Pakistan was still under martial law. Since Soldier-President Ayub is at the peak of his popularity, urged Qadir, why not take a leaf from De Gaulle and get himself formally recognized as head of state? Already elections were being held to choose 80,000 local members of Ayub's "basic democracies' union councils" (TIME, Jan. 4). Let those delegates then vote by secret ballot "in respect of their confidence in the present President of Pakistan."

If the vote was yes, as everyone expected it to be, "it should be treated as a mandate for the President" to set up machinery to write a new Constitution, "and he should also be deemed to have been elected as President of Pakistan for the first term of office under the Constitution to be so made."

Ayub's Cabinet, meeting without him (but obviously at his bidding), approved this procedure last week, and Ayub then allowed that if this was how the vote turned out, he would be "pleased to accept."