Word: tubman
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...Monrovia last week William Vacanarat Shadrach Tubman, 68, was inaugurated President of Liberia for the fifth time. Almost each inauguration has given a landmark to the country-a monument here, an assembly hall there. This time, 2,000 workers, about a fifth of Monrovia's labor force, and 150 foreign technicians have been working against time to complete the new executive mansion...
...underground swimming pool, a private chapel, a trophy room, a cinema, a strong room large enough to hold all the gold in Africa, and a kitchen big enough to prepare all the fufu (Liberia's national dish, a stew based on the cassava plant) that anyone could eat. Tubman's new home combines the comfort of a garish four-star hotel with the appearance of a department store the week before Christmas...
...dignified old executive mansion, with its columned portico reflecting the plantation houses of the antebellum U.S. South, had grown far too small. It sufficed when Tubman first took office in 1944 and Liberia was one of Africa's three independent states and had a budget of scarcely $1,000,000 a year. But today Liberia's budget is some $38 million annually, and its gross national product runs to about $250 million, derived from rubber, iron ore, and vast timber riches that are only beginning to be farmed. As Tubman exchanged visits with the leaders of new African...
Genial Shad Tubman rules Liberia through his True Whig Party and by the judicious use of jobs and "dash"-the local word for payoffs for favors-to keep the important 20,000 Americo-Liberians happy. He has also originated a unification policy intended to pass out political and economic plums to the hinterland tribes and was the first Liberian President to give them representation in the legislature. Half of the U.S. development grants of $8,600,000 a year is earmarked for teacher training and the construction of schools. Tubman quite frankly caters to the Liberian love of status...
...luxury Ducor Intercontinental Hotel, and paramount chiefs representing Liberia's 20-odd tribes brought with them retinues of up to 30 people, including wives, children, relatives, and entertainers such as dancers and drummers. In the streets, delirious crowds held arches of flowers and hurled bushels of confetti as Tubman whirled proudly through the streets in his Cadillac convertible during the inauguration festivities. Applause greeted every pronouncement in his inaugural address until he came to the final ringing sentence: "I enter upon the execution of the sacred task to which I have been called for the fifth and, I earnestly...