Correspondents' Correspondence

...In fact, commissions are now at work revising both the national Constitution and the statutes of the ruling party to make officials more responsive to the voters...

...Bourguiba, who will be 67 years old on August 3, does suffer noticeably from the effects of the viral hepatitis that sent him abroad for special treatment immediately after his third (and constitutionally last) election as President: He was obviously wilted after several hours of parading through the sunbaked streets of downtown Tunis...

...It is clear, from what Shultz says and what he does not say, that, as one observer put it, the White House is not so much jawboning as it is wishboning.Walter R. Gordon...

...Yet there remained enough elan in subsequent television speeches to suggest that his still magnetic presence would be around for some time...

...There is talk, too, of encouraging opposition papers and candidates...

...Yet in the peculiar world of business, appearance and reality are seldom practical distinctions...

...In substance, the Nixon speech seemed more a reaffirmation than an initiative...

...People are still talking, though, of the revelations concerning Ben Saleh's efforts to build himself a power base in the cooperative structures that would rival that of the ruling Socialist Destour party...

...The excitement generated by Bourguiba's arrival, accompanied by speculations about impending shuffles of government personnel, also demonstrated that neither the active politicians nor the ordinary citizens wished to dwell unduly on I'affaire Ben Saleh????which saw the erstwhile Secretary for Planning, Finance, Economy, and Education topple last September after he attempted to force a disastrous collectivization program on the country...

...Meanwhile, Premier Bahi Lad-gham (see NL, January 19) formed a new, stronger coalition Cabinet on June 13...

...Under his firm direction, the country has regained its sense of self-confidence and is already making noteworthy strides toward becoming a truly representative democracy.????lorna Hahn Economic Wishboning Washington-As expected, Democrats on Capitol Hill are publicly voicing dissatisfaction with the Administration's putative shift in economic policy...

...It is a fine bit of irony that Nixon chose George P. Shultz, newly appointed head of the Office of Management and Budget and the Administration's most outspoken opponent of jawboning, to preside over the recent economic shift and elucidate it to a confused press corps...

...If the proposals outlined in the President's June 17 statement represent a change at all, they say, it is simply too little and too late...

...Although Shultz performs valiantly in the background sessions with reporters, he is beginning to emerge as the domestic counterpart of Henry A. Kissinger, the filter through which most of the President's foreign policies pass to the outside world...

...The relatively light sentences 44-year-old Ben Saleh received 10 years at hard labor, the young ex-chef du cabinet was acquitted, and two provincial governors received suspended sentences????have suggested that some reconciliation might be attempted...

...But a return to "business as usual" is out of the question...

...The main disclosures came at the trial of the former Secretary and six associates at the end of May...

...Thus the President's urging wage-price restraint, his inaugurating an "inflation alert," and the establishment of a committee to examine productivity are privately viewed by both Republicans and Democrats as developments of some potential...

...His initial public appearance, for example, quieted rumors that his ill health had recently taken a sharp turn for the worse...

...Bourguiba Returns Tunis??resident Habib Bour-guiba's return home on June 1, following a seven-month stay in Paris, has eased the apprehensions of many foreign observers here...