Word: sonia
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...brats an electoral advantage that goes well beyond name recognition. Consider the dynastic allure of surnames such as Kennedy, Bush and Gandhi. (Of course it helps when the candidate can be at once Inheritor and White Knight, a political neophyte with an epic last name, such as India's Sonia Gandhi...
...SONIA GANDHI Wooed back as head of party, and may be India's P.M. Bigger dynasty than the Bushes...
India's movie industry specializes in raucous mythological epics; melodramatic histrionics are the mainstay of Italian opera. The two worlds collided in New Delhi this week with the triumphant return to politics of Sonia Gandhi. The Italian-born widow of slain prime minister Rajiv Gandhi reclaimed the reins of her Congress party Tuesday, after rowdy protests, pleading deputations and even an attempted self-immolation by a despairing supporter coaxed her out of a self-imposed week in the political wilderness. Promising that "every drop of my blood belongs to this country," Gandhi galvanized party activists for a head-on battle...
...politics had suffered after she led the party in maneuvering to bring down the government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee in April, but failed to secure the necessary votes to take power herself. With few significant policy differences between the two major parties, September's election will be all about Sonia Gandhi. The Congress party has used the mythical power of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty to rally jaded voters, while Vajpayee's Hindu nationalist party has vowed to make Gandhi's origins the centerpiece of its campaign. Get ready for the drama...
...Resigning actually allows Sonia to restore her image of being above the dirty fray of politics and uninterested in power," says TIME New Delhi correspondent Maseeh Rahman, who points out that even the rebels who'd challenged her credentials as a prime minister want her to continue as party leader. "That image," adds Rahman, "had suffered a setback recently when she'd helped bring down the BJP government and was then unable to form a new one." In fact, says Rahman, "she's really angry and may agree only to campaign for Congress but not accept nomination for prime minister...