A Test of Power

President Carlos Castillo Armas last week called on Guatemalans to go to the polls Oct. 10 and decide whether or not he should remain in power. The election call came astonishingly soon after the President's June coup against the pro-Red regime of Jacobo Arbenz. But the terms of Castillo Armas' decrees made the election practically defeat-proof.

The decrees casually dispensed with the secret ballot. Instead, to save "unnecessary paper work," voters will go before election boards and orally proclaim their choices. First they will elect members of an assembly to write a new constitution.

Only one slate, from a newly formed National Anti-Communist Front, will be offered, on the theory that the people are "tired of politics." Next the voter will be asked: "Do you wish President Castillo Armas to continue in office for a term to be fixed by the Constituent Assembly?" He can answer si or no, but cannot vote for anyone else.

Just why anti-Communist Castillo Armas chose to hurry into such an obvious one-candidate election was a puzzler; it seemed unlikely that his motive was to try to force a rigid, Soviet-style show of unanimity out of the people. More likely, the election was scheduled to provide a form of constitutional legality for his regime before any strong opposition could develop. Ironically, all present signs show that he could have won a free and secret ballot just about as easily.

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