Word: dacko
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...tyrannical Emperor Bokassa I was overthrown in the Central African Empire two weeks ago, it was hailed as a triumph of sanity over murderous despotism. By last week, however, the French connection in the affair was proving an embarrassment, and the all too Francophile new regime of President David Dacko was proving less than popular...
...plot first came to light when Dacko, a former President now reinstalled in Bokassa's place, revealed that the French had dreamed up the whole scheme and flown him and 500 French troops into the country to engineer the takeover. "Some countries call upon Cubans," declared Dacko disingenuously. "Why shouldn't we call upon French troops, since they are our friends?" French officials, mindful of criticism about previous interventions in Chad, Zaire and Mauritania, at first denied all, then admitted "helping out," and finally delivered a confession boasting that it was the only coup lately in which...
Meanwhile, trouble was also stirring back in the Central African Republic, as it had been promptly renamed. Although Dacko released political prisoners jailed during the Bokassa reign, there was resentment when he reappointed many members of Bokassa's Cabinet. At the same time, supporters of former Prime Minister Ange Patasse, a prominent opposition figure who had quit the Bokassa regime in 1978 in protest over its atrocities, staged anti-French demonstrations when his departure from Paris was held up by technicalities. At week's end Patasse castigated Dacko as an accomplice of Bokassa and demanded he resign. Part...
...empire was mercifully short-lived. While Bokassa was away in Libya last week, he was deposed in a bloodless, midnight coup by former President David Dacko, himself overthrown by Bokassa in 1966. The downfall of the "Butcher of Bangui" gave Africa something to cheer about: the continent is now rid of its three most notorious dictators. In April, Field Marshal Idi Amin Dada was driven from Uganda by rebels and invading Tanzanian troops. Last month the equally despised President-for-Life of tiny Equatorial Guinea, Francisco Macias Nguema, was booted by a military coup...
...radio broadcast, Dacko, 49, a former schoolteacher who was the first President of the former French colony after independence in 1960, proclaimed the country the Central African Republic again and promised to "return sovereignty to the people." At week's end French troops flew to Bangui to maintain order and perhaps to make sure Bokassa does not return from exile...