Word: strongman
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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While Sein Lwin is the new strongman, Rangoon may not have heard the last of Ne Win. Although he accepted some of the blame for the recent riots in & which more than 200 may have been killed, the wily dictator seemed to have no regrets about the brutal tactics used to crush the disturbances. "When the army shoots," he said in his resignation speech, "it shoots to hit. It does not fire in the air to scare...
When the ruling Burma Socialist Program Party met for a three-day congress in Rangoon late last week, it was expected to focus on long-overdue economic reforms and a housecleaning of the organization's sclerotic bureaucracy. But General Ne Win, the wily strongman who has ruled Burma since 1962, had a surprise in store. In a nationally televised address after the congress convened, Ne Win, 77, offered his resignation as chairman of his insular country's only political party. He also called for a referendum within 60 days on ending the country's single-party government...
...years since then, the strongman has grown more reclusive and his country more xenophobic -- and poorer. Per capita income stands at only $200 a year, well below that of China and the Philippines. Once the major rice exporter of South Asia, Burma is now barely self-sufficient in that staple. Rangoon is a seedy, decaying city where paint peels on once grand Victorian mansions; a Western visitor to the capital last week found that little had changed in the past five or six years...
Nonetheless, he had more than his share of frustrations in the job. Associates speculated that he was troubled by Attorney General Edwin Meese's determination to stay in office and by the Administration's inept negotiations with Panamanian Strongman Antonio Noriega. A man who dislikes confrontation, Baker was often reluctant to argue a position with the President. But he maintains that he was not upset by a failure to sway Reagan. "The President makes his own decisions," says Baker. "I've never been disappointed if he goes some other course. All that has nothing to do with my decision...
...this same audience that visits Miami and thinks every Cuban living there will steal all their valuables. It is this same audience that looks at the antics of Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega and says, "That's what Latin Americans are supposed to do. We've seen this stuff in the movies...