Word: ayub
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...first gingerly experiment with popular elections since suspending his country's parliamentary regime 15 months ago, Pakistan's Strongman Mohammed Ayub Khan last week got an Elvis Presley-like response. Functioning as a kind of electoral college, close to 80,000 recently elected village councilmen were allowed to vote yes or no to the question: "Have you confidence in the President, Field Marshal Mohammed Ayub Khan?" No less than 95.6% put their approving mark beside a smiling multi-clad picture of the field marshal. Those who did not trust the field marshal had the choice of checking...
...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...
...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...
Ending Parties. Last March Ayub settled himself in his teak-paneled study in the huge President's House at Karachi and wrote the outline for his "basic democracies," which are intended "to begin at the beginning and, after building a strong, democratic base, to construct the structure above." What emerged was a political system based on the ancient institution of the village panchayat (council of elders). Each council, with elected as well as appointed representatives, will represent 10,000 people. Working without salaries, council members will be expected to levy local taxes, maintain roads, operate police forces, register births...
Since many of the council members who will be elected during the two-week balloting will be both inexperienced and illiterate (in a country 82% illiterate), Ayub has ordered that council chairmen receive two months of training in financial and administrative affairs. This spring, Ayub will appoint a commission to draft a constitution to go into effect by 1961. It will feature a strong executive, an absence of political parties ("Otherwise, we will have no peace"), and the in direct election of a national legislature and President by the new councils, serving as electoral colleges. The idea resembles the democracy...