99.93% Pure

Hitler's best as a vote-getter was 99.81% Ja's in 1936; Stalin's peak was 99.73% Da's in 1946. Last week Premier Mohammed Mossadegh, the man in the iron cot, topped them all with 99.93%.

This is the way he did it. Having unconstitutionally dissolved the Majlis, Mossadegh ordered a national referendum to judge his act, crying: "The will of the people is above law." The 1906 Iranian constitution (which Mossadegh as a young revolutionary helped put across) requires a secret ballot. Mossadegh scrupulously ordered up all the paraphernalia: voting tents, police guards, army tanks. In fact, he ordered a double set of everything—one for Teheran's vast Sepah Square, another for Baharestan Square. Anyone voting yes could do so "secretly" in Sepah Square, but to vote no, one had to go to Baharestan. Government employees were let off work and in mobs descended on Sepah Square. So did other mobs assembled by the outlawed Tudeh Communist Party, which also would like to keep Parliament dissolved. In the happy crush, people did not have to show their identity cards or have their hands smeared with indelible ink. Many voted three or four times.

In Baharestan Square, things were different. The occasional voter had to run a gauntlet of signs proclaiming: "Only Traitors Vote for Non-Dissolution." Election officials dozed, read magazines, swapped stories. At day's end, to no one's surprise, the count in Teheran district stood: for the dissolution (and Mossadegh), 166,550; against, 116. Mossadegh hailed the vote, of course, as a great vindication of democracy.