Word: figureheads
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...prominence and power in December. As head of the Defense Security Command, he abruptly arrested some 40 senior military officers in connection with Park's death; the round-up amounted to an effective coup. The former paratrooper quickly consolidated his power, reducing President Choi Kyu Hah to a figurehead. Choi finally stepped down on Aug. 16, and a week later General Chun duly resigned his commission, in legalistic conformity with the constitution, which bars military men from the presidency. "He was the only guy for the job," a Western diplomat said with a shrug. "When Korea needs stability...
Perhaps the most brazen of all the mullahs, Ayatullah Seyyed Mohammed Beheshti, thus consolidated his party's power and made good on a seven-month-old vow to reduce the popularly elected President to a figurehead. Even Banisadr's attempt to retain his constitutional veto rights over Cabinet appointments was rudely quashed by the mullahs. "The Prime Minister," insisted Beheshti, "must be free to choose anyone he deems fit for Cabinet positions...
...when the Allies needed a secure route to ship war supplies to the Soviet Union, Reza Shah, a Nazi sympathizer, was forced into exile. His son, then 21, initially was little more than a figurehead. At war's end he confronted his first crisis when Soviet forces, refusing to leave the country, set up a puppet regime in the northern province of Azerbaijan. Iran took the issue to the United Nations and, with considerable support from the U.S., succeeded in having them expelled...
...Iran's battered economy in accordance with the Islamic socialist theories he had developed as a doctoral student at the Sorbonne. Yet somehow Abolhassan Banisadr, 46, has become the saddest political casualty of the Islamic Republic; his clerical enemies in the Revolutionary Council have reduced him to a figurehead chief executive, frustrating his every move. Two weeks ago, in an admission of defeat, he handed in his resignation to Khomeini, to be exercised at the Ayatullah's discretion...
DIED. Ton Due Thang, 91, figurehead President of North Viet Nam after the death of Ho Chi Minn in 1969 and the only man to serve as President since the country's 1976 reunification with South Viet Nam; of a heart attack; in Hanoi. The choice of the southern-born "Uncle Ton," a longtime Communist Party faithful, as successor to the legendary Ho was a compromise designed to forestall a power struggle between more influential leaders in the party. While Ton's presidency was largely ceremonial in character, the power of the office is now likely...