Word: grips
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Although they won more than half the seats in the 400-member parliament in June's elections, Bulgaria's former Communist leaders have been struggling to keep a grip on power and hold their newly renamed Bulgarian Socialist Party together. The internal crisis was triggered early last month when President Petar Mladenov, who deposed longtime Stalinist leader Todor Zhivkov in November 1989, stepped down under pressure. Mladenov had angered opposition groups and liberal members of his party by suggesting that tanks be used to break up a pro-democracy demonstration last December...
...Prime Minister's disputed poll tax. Thatcher nonetheless had no hesitation in giving him the nation's spiritual primacy, no doubt because she agrees with a preappointment editorial in the Economist that declared, "What is needed is an inspiring missionary leader for a church that has lost whatever grip it had on an increasingly pagan country." No bishop has been more enthusiastic in promoting the church's desperately needed "Decade of Evangelism" in the 1990s, and none seems better equipped to give it a go than Carey of Canterbury...
Four punishing years into her six-year term, Aquino remains surprisingly undaunted by the precarious state of her country and her tenuous grip on the helm. Her government is struggling to cope with a store of major problems -- economic, political and security-related -- which have created a growing crisis of confidence among liberal activists over the ability of fragile democratic institutions to deliver reform...
Until federal agents and local police enticed him into smoking crack cocaine with a former girlfriend in a hotel room last January, Marion Barry had a grip on Washington's city hall that seemed so secure that he was referred to as "mayor for life." But last week, in the midst of jury selection for his trial on drug-possession and perjury charges, Barry called it quits. To remove the "shadow" of his legal difficulties from the election of his successor, he declared that he would not seek a fourth term. "Many of my supporters and political polls have indicated...
Once again North Carolina seemed in the grip of political schizophrenia. The calm and articulate Gantt, a former two-term mayor of Charlotte, may appeal to the progressive voters who gave the state a reputation for moderation by electing such Democrats as Terry Sanford, first as a forward-looking Governor and in 1986 as North Carolina's other Senator. The tart-tongued Helms, on the other hand, has won three terms by pushing hot-button hard-right issues -- pornography, school prayer, busing -- among whites in more rural parts of the state. To have a shot at Helms, local experts...