Word: leaders
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...recent cover, weekly French newsmagazine Le Point featured a photo of a confounded- looking President Nicolas Sarkozy in a heavy rainstorm with a headline that read what's happening to him? Both the image and the question captured Sarkozy's transformation from a leader who could do no wrong to one whose every move seems to incite opposition or controversy - even among allies. Many of the French President's woes exist because voters are confused about what he stands for. His decisions seem to contradict each other, they complain, and his policies are often ideologically schizophrenic. "For the first...
...when you study him. Is he the man elected President in May 2007, who immediately set out to lower income taxes, scrap France's 35-hour workweek, revoke special retirement privileges for public-transport workers, and harangue employees to "work more to earn more"? Or is he the leader who in the past year has slapped down greedy bankers, fumed at U.S. and British resistance to French plans for strict new regulations of the global finance sector, and preached the gospel of "moralizing capitalism"? Is he the man, a son of a Hungarian immigrant, who, newly elected, challenged French pretense...
...presidency, Sarkozy's frosty relationship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel led him to downgrade the Franco-German relationship that has traditionally been central to French policy in Europe and instead cultivate closer ties with the U.K. But in April, ahead of the G-20 summit in London, the French leader rushed back to Merkel on the issue of tougher international regulation of financial markets, and has since encouraged a tighter relationship with Berlin. Last week, Sarkozy even started a public fight with British Chancellor Alistair Darling by bragging that the appointment of a French official to oversee E.U. regulation...
Late Wednesday, the Indian government announced it would approve the carving out of a separate state known as Telangana from Andhra Pradesh. The movement for Telangana secession is virtually as old as the Indian republic itself, but it gained traction this month after its main political leader, K. Chandrashekar Rao, commenced a week-long fast. Rao's deteriorating health as well as coordinated protests - some violent - across the 10 districts of Andhra Pradhesh's 23 that comprise Telangana, including the influential high-tech capital of Hyderabad, seemed to force New Delhi's hand. But it could open a whole series...
...Delhi has dialed back its support for Telangana, insisting that the matter now find a resolution through a vote in the Andhra Pradesh legislature. Given the current tumult, it's unclear when or how such a motion may go through. The political party headed by Rao, the Telangana separatist leader, was trounced both in recent state and national polls. His hunger strike - now ended - and the disturbances organized around it were likely an act of desperation of a movement shorn of much of its real political capital. "Having the government buckle to this kind moral blackmail is not a healthy...