Yugoslavia: How to Win Job Security

Like many durable dictators, Yugoslavia’s Marshal Tito preserves his one-man rule by the simple expedient of holding down the key jobs himself. He is Secretary-General of the Communist Party, supreme commander of the armed forces, and chief of state. As if that were not enough, Belgrade’s complaisant Federal People’s Republic unanimously approved a new national constitution last week giving Tito the presidency for life.*

While his handsome wife Jovanka beamed down from a visitors’ box, Tito strode into the hall to the cheers of the crowd and sat gravely through a formal reading of the new charter. Afterward, looking remarkably fit for a man who will be 71 next month, he happily auto graphed copies of the constitution.

In addition to sanctifying Tito’s supremacy, the document included other novelties. A new Assembly will be com posed of no fewer than five chambers, each with its own specialty. One will deal with economics, others with education, social, general administrative, and federal matters. For the first time, there will be a Premier and a Vice President, although neither one is designated to succeed Tito in the event of his sudden death. Their powers will be strictly limited. Under the new constitution, the Communist Party remains the “fundamental initiator of political activity.”

* Spain’s Francisco Franco is the only other dictator with legal life tenure as chief of state. Ghana’s strongman President, Kwame Nkrumah, was voted permanently into office in September, but His High Dedication modestly vetoed the gesture, preferring to rely on elections—a safe enough gesture since the country is officially a one-party state.