There was no question of his seeking to abandon or seriously modify his own special version of benign, despotic paternalism. What the new structure sought to do was to endow the President's authority with greater legitimacy. Two years after its foundation, the official Party could boast no more than 20,000 members, a figure which hardly suggested massive popular support in the country at large.

I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Som…, loc. 546