Word: didi
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Soon after the gentle people of the Maidive Islands abolished their centuries-old sultanate and elected Amin Didi their first President (TIME. Jan. 12, 1953), they began to regret it. Amin Didi was chock-full of reform plans-he wrote a new anthem to the tune of Auld Lang Syne; he abolished purdah and designed a new Mother Hubbard for women to wear; he forced the men to elect women to the legislature; he built an elaborate handicraft shop, despite the fact that rarely more than a half dozen tourists a year visit the isolated island chain...
...these things are done more calmly. Last January, after centuries of autocratic rule under a sultanate, the Maldives became the world's youngest republic by simple popular vote (TIME, Jan. 12). There was no trouble whatever; the sultans had long since tired of their confining work, and Amin Didi, the man the Maldivians unanimously elected to serve as both President and Prime Minister in the new republic, was next in line for sultan anyway. Just to keep it all in the family, Ibrahim Mohamed Didi, a cousin, was elected vice president...
Last week the Maldives passed smoothly into another stage of political evolution. Ibrahim and another cousin, Ibrahim Ali Didi, tossed cousin Amin Didi in jail and took over the government themselves. Just what the political stage was at that point no outsider knew, since the Maldives' only connection with the world is through still another cousin, Ahmed Hilmi Didi, who promptly quit his job as ambassador to Ceylon. "I have been kept completely in the dark," said Ahmed Didi last week. "All I know is that Amin Didi has resigned...
When Budu Svanidze told his mother he wanted to be like his Uncle Sosso when he grew up, she slapped his little face. Uncle Sosso lived in the Caucasian Mountains and spent most of his time robbing and killing Russian soldiers and policemen. Since his home town of Didi-Lilo was a two-by-four hotbed of Georgian nationalism, this made Uncle Sosso rather popular with most townsfolk. But when Budu's mother remembered how Sosso had been sent to an Orthodox seminary to be trained for the church, and how he had subsequently turned so shamelessly irreligious...
Last year the islands voted 99 to 1 to abolish the Sultanate altogether and establish a republic. Amin Didi was unanimously elected first president. Amin, 43, who visits London twice a year and rules with a firm but fair hand, accepted the job because, as he himself said, he could find no one else as worthy...