Word: figurehead
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...Watergate points put the intrinsic contradiction within presidential democracy. The religious reverence due a national figurehead and focus of patriotic allegiance is incompatible with the critical scrutiny due to a country's most powerful policymaker. One either concedes. "After all, he's the President," or one feels as if he has thrown mud on the flag. Perhaps it is not too late to consider a switch to parliamentary democracy, which is based on the principle that he who reigns should not govern...
Much of Panama's economic mess is attributable to Torrijos. A mercurial figure of 43, Torrijos has muzzled the press and banned all political parties. Though he allows a figurehead President to sign decrees, he has had himself invested as "maximum leader of the revolution" for another six years. A much ballyhooed scheme to grow sugar cane in the Veraguas province of west-central Panama has failed miserably because the land there is too dry for sugar production. On the other hand, a new labor code that increases workers' benefits has elevated costs and lowered productivity to such...
There was no doubt as to who would make the final decisions. Earthy Tachito Somoza, whose only title at present is National Guard commander, had stepped down from the presidency last May and turned his powers over to a figurehead three-man junta only because he could not succeed himself under the Nicaraguan constitution. He had planned to stay on the sidelines until late 1974, when he would run for a second certain five-year term as President. Now, with his country in crisis, it seemed likely that the strongman would be flexing his muscles a lot sooner...
...Tahrir Square in grisly public hangings. Other enemies of the regime languish in a Baghdad prison that Iraqis ironically refer to as the "Palace of the End." President Ahmed Hassan Bakr, 57, the cautious army general who was installed to arbitrate between feuding Baath factions, has become a figurehead as Vice President Takriti concentrated power in his own hands. Says a Western diplomat in Baghdad: "As things stand now, Bakr has no role to play; Saddam Hussein...
...After that," DeLury says, "we had a new commissioner once every three months, and the commissioner became a simple figurehead. Thank Christ they have the union there to keep the department going...