The statute provides that in the armed forces Party affairs are to be directed by the Political Directorate of the Ministry of People's Defense and in the Ministry of the Interior they are to be directed by appropriate political organs. Party organizations in the armed forces operate on the basis of special instructions issued by the Party's Central Committee. All chiefs of political branches in military units and installations must be Party members with no less than five years of membership. The political organs in the military units are required to maintain close contact with the local Party committees (see ch. 9, Internal and External Security). The latest official figures for Party membership were given by Party First Secretary Hoxha in his report to the Fifth Party Congress in 1966. He placed the total membership at 66,327, of which 3,314 were candidate members. Since the Fourth Party Congress in 1961 the membership had grown by 12,688. According to Hoxha, the social composition of the Party membership was as follows: workers, 32.9 percent; collective farmers, 25.8 percent; private farmers, 3.2 percent; state, Party, and mass organization officials and armed forces personnel, 37.2 percent; and students and housewives, 0.9 percent. Of the total Party membership, women comprised 12.5 percent. Hoxha also said that nearly 68 percent of all Communists lived in cities and only 32 percent in villages, despite the fact, he commented, that the rural population was three times as large as that of the cities. Party Operations A fundamental factor in the Party's exercise of political power and control is the selection of candidates for all elected positions. Although the candidates for such elective organs as the People's Assembly, the people's courts, and the people's councils at all levels are formally nominated by the meetings of mass organizations or of workers and peasants, they have been, in fact, handpicked by the local Party organizations and approved by the Party Central Committee. The procedure at all nominating meetings is standard and simple: a list of candidates, previously prepared by the Party district or city committee, is read; the qualifications of each candidate are described; and the list is unanimously approved. Since the first national and local elections held in 1945 in which the list of candidates included non-Party people, lists have been restricted to Party members only. Veterans of Hoxha's partisan forces of the so-called War of National Liberation still predominate among candidates for office.