Word: tshisekedi
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...denomination alone to decades of misrule in Zaire: 5 million zaires, valued at a purported % $2. The bill was floated by the country's long-ruling and long-embattled dictator Mobutu Sese Seko -- and was promptly declared worthless by his rival in a power standoff, transitional Premier Etienne Tshisekedi. Most merchants refused to accept the disputed tender. When Zairian soldiers were paid with it, they went on an armed rampage, looting shops and the homes of several thousand Europeans who live in the former Belgian colony...
...latest unrest was prompted by Mobutu's ouster of his new Prime Minister, Etienne Tshisekedi, a leader of the opposition coalition, who had angered Mobutu by refusing to swear allegiance to him. Mobutu named a lesser opposition figure, Bernardin Mungul Diaka, as replacement. But Tshisekedi refused to step down. Instead, he rallied opposition support, and the standoff ! continued. What had started as a forced experiment in multiparty democracy had become a murderous farce, and it was far from over...