Liberia’s N.C.O. heads order political manhunt

Press, 14 April 1980, Page 9

Liberia’s N.C.O. heads order political manhunt

NZPA-Reuter Monrovia

Liberia’s new leaders were rdunding up fleeing Government Ministers and officials yesterday after overthrowing President William Tolbert, who died in the military coup.

Immigration men were under orders to arrest any officials trying to escape from the country, and soldiers in the capital of Monrovia were commandeering cars in an apparent search for the wanted men.

Names of wanted officials, including the Finance Minister (Mrs Ellen Joynson-Sir-leaf) were read out in radio broadcasts. They were .ordered to report to the Presidential palace.

Monrovia was under a dusk-to-dawn curfew ordered by the group of non-commis-sioned officers who staged Saturday’s coup. Their leader and Liberia’s new Head of State, Sergeant Samuel K. Do, aged 28, said the coup had been staged to

end rampant corruption and ineffective government. President Tolbert, aged 66, was shot three times in the head after rebels broke into [his palace, according to a palace doctor.

His wife, Victoria; was arrested, Radio Liberia has said, and eyewitnesses say looters ransacked the homes of Senator Frank Tolbert, a brother of the President, and the Justice Minister (Mr Joseph Chesson),. who was arrested.

The coup in the West .African country, with- its population of about 2,000,000, caine after rumbling discontent since riots in April, 1979,? in which 49 j people were officially said ‘to have died. The riots •flared over a rise in the • price of rice. • One of. Sergeant Do’s first I moves, as head of . a i “Peopled Redemption Council,” was to name 15 officers ito take immediate charge of • regional areas as acting su-

perintendents, according to Radio Elwa, a Monrovia missionary station. Soldiers around the .country were ordered to stop random shooting to -, save ammunition, and warned they would be dealt with if they did not, according to Radio Liberia. Sergeant Do also summoned the Soviet and United States ambassadors to the Presidential palace to meet him immediately after the coup, the radio has said. In Washington, the State Department said the new leaders had summoned the United States Charge D’Affaires (Mr Julius Walker) and had told him they wished to maintain friendly relations with the United States. One reliable source said the new Government had also freed all members Of the sole ’ Opposition party, ’the People’s . Progressive Party, wnose leaders had been in jail on treason and sedition charges.’

President [Tolbert had the party banned last month after it called for a general strike to topple him.

That move made Liberia a one-party state undOr the True Whig Party, which has dominated the country’s politics virtually since it became an independent state in 1847.

Dr Tolbert had promised to be “the President God wants me to be” and introduce sweeping reforms when he took office in 1971. But divisions and inequalities remained between rich and poor, between new settlers and the indigenous descendents of free American slaves who founded the country and whose, heirs have dominated it.

Dr Tolbert, himself the grandson of art American black, had promised free [medical care for infants and free college education from I July 1 in an effort to meet Opposition demands for Igreater social justice. /