Word: tolbert
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...never experienced a coup d'état, a remarkable record given the turbulent politics of West Africa. Last weekend a group of noncommissioned officers and Liberian National Guardsmen conducted a bold dawn raid on the palatial executive mansion in the capital city of Monrovia. Their target: William R. Tolbert Jr., 66, Liberia's President and the current chairman of the Organization of African Unity. According to one account, Tolbert was shot in the face and killed. His wife Victoria and members of the Cabinet, the judiciary and the legislature were seized and imprisoned...
Radio broadcasts from Monrovia identified the coup leader as Samuel Doe, 28, an obscure master sergeant in the Liberian army who called his new government the People's Redemption Council of the Armed Forces of Liberia. Doe declared that he had overthrown the Tolbert regime because of its "rampant corruption and continuous failure" to solve Liberia's problems. Mindful that Liberia has always been one of America's closest African allies, Doe asked for a meeting with U.S. Chargé d'Affaires Julius Walker. He told Walker that he was aware of America's "historic...
...Tolbert's brutal downfall surprised few Liberia watchers. Though the country was long one of the most stable in black Africa, there was increasing dissatisfaction with Tolbert's autocratic ways and with the corruption and inefficiency of his top-heavy bureaucracy. Perhaps most resented was the dominance of the so-called Americo-Liberians, descendants of the freed American slaves who began settling on the western Guinea coast in 1822. Though the vast majority of the country's 1.7 million people are impoverished tribal Africans, most of the political power and wealth have traditionally been controlled...
...recriminations, sadly enough, a crucial OAU report warning of "impending disaster" for Africa's deteriorating economies was given short shrift. The perfunctory debate over the study, which recommended the creation of a Common Market for the continent, tended to justify a sad remark by Liberian President William Tolbert. Most issues, concluded the OAU host and conference chairman, had been "decisively unaddressed...
Schmeiser said she and Tolbert agree that their goal "is not to force nutrition on anyone, but rather to let those who are concerned about nutrition pursue good eating habits." She added, "the whole meal shouldn't be like one big dessert...