Word: afforded
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Shaken by two coups in four months, South VietNam can ill afford another, for such an upheaval could prove disastrous to the war effort. Hence McNamara's visit to Saigon last week-the third in five months. On arrival, McNamara placed his hand on Khanh's shoulder in full view of the welcoming crowd at the airport, announced that the 36-year-old career officer "has our admiration, our respect and our complete support...
Colonial administrators found it easier to make major decisions without consulting the populace. In the same way, one-party leaders like Nyerere and Nkrumah insist that they cannot afford the luxury of dissent and opposition. Many argue, by way of rationalization, that the one-party state is a modern adaptation of traditional tribal society, in which the individual was free to ex press his viewpoint under the baobab tree, but had to accept the tribe's (or chief's) decision once rendered. And indeed a certain amount of discussion filters up from the ranks...
...strain is, of course, too great. Last year Senegalese Poet-President Leopold Sedar Senghor-once the prince of Paris' black boulevardiers-was obliged to tell the nation that Senegal could unfortunately no longer afford to pay civil servants housing and winter-clothing allowances or finance vacation trips to France. But Senghor has never implemented his decree, and the ridiculous subsidies remain. And he did not even dare suggest a cut in basic pay, for fear of another upheaval like the one he put down 15 months ago, when a coup was led by his old friend, Premier Mahmadou...
...British civil servants, desperately needed to run the government until Africans could be trained to replace them. They were angry because their "golden handshake"-the severance pay of up to $28,000 a man-could not be paid in lump sums. Nyerere's government simply could not afford it. Turning on the earnest charm that had welded his party, he talked 300 of the British into staying on. But then another disaster struck. Droughts and floods in 1962 ruined the maize crop, forcing 500,000 Tanganyikans onto the famine rolls, gobbling up $6,000,000 earmarked for national development...
...dowry to buy a steamship ticket, Stavros consents to marry the daughter of a wealthy rug merchant, whose bourgeois contentment repels him. But he has begun to concoct American-sounding rationalizations for his new tactics: "You have to look out for yourself in this world. You can't afford to be human." Soon Stavros abandons his prospective bride, a gentle girl whom he warns, "For your own happiness, don't trust me." Then, in a finishing kick of debased Algerism, he earns his passage to America as a gigolo and enters the country illegally with a group of indentured shoeshine...