Word: olympio
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...austerity can be just as dangerous. No West African leader was more reluctant to part with a franc than Togo's strapping Sylvanus Olympio. Then one night he woke to find his house aswarm with mutinous soldiers. Next morning he was found dead near the U.S. embassy, with lizards scuttling near his body. The soldier who shot him said he had not meant to kill. It was just that the troops wanted a bigger army...
Four months after the assassination of President Sylvanus Olympio by a disgruntled army sergeant, the Togolese electorate went dutifully to the polls this week to choose a new government. There was little suspense about the outcome. The voters, handed a single list, could only rubber-stamp the military-backed regime that has succeeded Olympio in the tiny West African republic...
Slated for a continued five-year term as President is Nicolas Grunitzky, 50, the mulatto son of a Prussian doctor and Togolese mother who headed a pro-French puppet regime before Olympio gained independence from Paris in 1960, and who was called upon to take over as Provisional President last January. Ticketed to stay on as Vice President was Antoine Meatchi, 37, a tall, ambitious northern tribesman. To keep the various party factions happy, the election organizers agreed in advance on the makeup of a 56-member National Assembly, divided among virtually all political parties, including Olympio's Comit...
...part of his economic austerity program, Olympio had stubbornly refused to expand Togo's flyspeck army beyond its standing strength of 250 men-exactly one company. This angered both the "army" and the demobilized, hard-eyed Togolese veterans of French colonial wars, who had fought from Indo-China to Algeria but could find no place in their homeland's armed forces. Recently, a tough ex-sergeant, Emmanuel Bodjolle, 35, jobless and with a family to support, organized a conspiracy with 30 other noncoms. Last week, after Olympio tore up a final plea to take into the service...
...Olympio's successor is Nicolas Grunitzky, 49, his brother-in-law, who was swept out of office as territorial Premier for the French when Olympio took over five years ago. Grunitzky's first act was to announce that Togo would align itself with the Afro-Malagasy Union, the pro-French association of West Africa states. Then he declared free elections would soon follow. But, as so often happens in such circumstances, he decided it would be best to dissolve Parliament and rule alone until things settled down...