Word: sonia
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...remarkably selfless?and courageous?decision. All the more so because Sonia must have suspected what the rest of India would soon learn: that she would prove to be a woefully inadequate party leader. Described by friends as shy and private, Sonia comes across as almost devoid of charisma. She assiduously avoids reporters and, whenever possible, political events. She shows scant comprehension of economics or international affairs, and seems entirely out of touch with the galloping high-tech industry that's driving the economy. She refuses to respond to personal attacks over her foreign birth, or to make...
...occasionally there are signs that Sonia may share some of the crowd's feelings. In four long, hot days of campaigning, she visibly relaxes only once?when she calls a sudden unscheduled halt in the middle of a dust-bowl plain and strides out to where she has spied a group of female nomads under a tent of sticks and black plastic. The women have only the faintest idea of who she is. Sonia cannot understand their dialect. And the photographers, trailing far behind, cannot hope to capture this briefest of off-guard moments. But away from the crowds...
...collection of distinguished but inactive has-beens who are blind to the party's present ignominies. Nowadays, the party's sole identifiable belief?beyond its vaguely left-of-center economics?seems to be an awed deference to the Gandhis. The only election slogan Congress supporters ever use is: "Sonia Gandhi! Rahul Gandhi! Priyanka Gandhi!" As one Indian correspondent derisively puts it: "Today's Congress is a personality cult. Only with no personality, and a dying cult...
...Labour in Britain. But for now Congress is mainly counting on the dissatisfaction of those left behind by India's economic boom?a huge demographic in a country with an estimated 370 million people living on $1 or less a day?and the sentimental adoration of the masses. While Sonia Gandhi and her children are being mobbed in Uttar Pradesh, Prime Minister Vajpayee and his deputy Lal Krishna Advani are holding a rally a couple of hours away in the state capital, Lucknow, which is Vajpayee's constituency. Whatever the BJP's electoral standing, the polite applause and lackluster cheers...
...Gandhi family is adapting to the role played by the royal families of Europe as they, too, ceded power: bastions of tradition, patrician benefactors, guardians of a nation's soul. And of all the Gandhis, it is the reluctant leader Sonia who most personifies this. The sacrifice of leaving everything she knew?losing her brother-in-law, mother-in-law and husband, then accepting the life that killed them?has earned Sonia a respect and affection in her adopted country that resonate far beyond politics or nationality. Priyanka's Indian businessman husband Robert Vadra describes it simply as "unconditional love...