Present & Accounted For

Marshal Tito was running to succeed himself as President of Yugoslavia, and since his was the only name on the ballot, it was taken for granted that all members of Parliament gathered in Belgrade would vote for No. 1. But did they? On the record, 536 members were present, but there were only 535 votes for Tito. Could one of the delegates have abstained? A recheck was hastily made and greeted with sighs of relief: only 535 members were on hand, and all had voted "Tito." This crisis past, Tito was still President and dictator of his country. No one administered the new oath of office; he swore himself in. During the day, the parliamentarians gave him a total of eight standing ovations.

In this show of crashing unanimity, one M.P. was conspicuously absent: Milovan Djilas, the purged and disgraced Vice President who had gabbled too much about the rigid Marxism and flexible love lives of his fellow top Communists (TIME, Jan. 18 et seq.). "Political pornography," one of his critics called it. Djilas sent word that he had resigned his seat. To succeed him as Assembly President, the members last week unanimously elected Mosa Pijade, 64, a gnomelike little man whose friendly, avuncular air (covering the steely core of a seasoned revolutionist) has earned him the nickname Cica (uncle). He joined the Communist Party in 1920, founded the newspaper Borba, which remains the mouthpiece of Yugoslav Communism today. Most of the years between World Wars I and II he spent in jail, continuing there to plot, teach and organize (Tito was one of his pupils). Mosa Pijade was on Tito's military staff in the struggle against Hitler, was elected a Politburo member last year, and is considered to be Yugoslav Communism's finest orator.

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