In his 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 a blank blue space.
It was not much of a contest, but it did at least familiarize Pakistanis with election techniques against the day when a constitution is written and a freer democracy promised. Voters marked their ballots in curtained privacy, dropped them in padlocked steel ballot boxes; after tally clerks had tabulated the results, fleet couriers hopped on horse or camel, or jumped into autos or motorboats, to hurry to the nearest telegraph office. Many Pakistan electors decorated their ballots with Urdu or Bengali verses in praise of Sandhurst-trained Field Marshal Ayub, attached bills and checks payable to Ayub's favorite uplift projects, or simply wrote: "I love Ayub." So little suspense was involved that Karachi's leading daily, Dawn, published full details on President Ayub's plans for his inaugural three days before he was even elected and five days before the votes were officially in.
Though the field marshal not long ago declared himself "not interested in personal power; I would rather retire and enjoy myself," Pakistanis last week saw signs that, unlike Burma's General Ne Win, who seems really to shrink from publicity, Good Soldier Ayub more and more enjoys basking in the role of his nation's savior.