Word: sonia
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...game of one-on-one, and Sonia Gandhi never saw the ball. India's month-long election ended Sunday with the ruling Hindu nationalist Baharatiya Janata party set to strengthen its majority. In what looks like a crushing blow to the vaunted Gandhi political dynasty, exit polls pointed to the BJP block collecting around 300 parliamentary seats compared with a little over 150 for Mrs. Gandhi's Congress party and its allies. In an election where no significant policy issues were at stake, Congress had hoped the allure of the Gandhi name would restore its fortunes. Although the BJP mercilessly...
...does Sonia's electoral humiliation spell the end of the Gandhi dynasty? Not likely. In many ways, hers had been something of a caretaker candidacy by a Gandhi no one had expected to go into politics. The true heir to the Nehru-Gandhi throne is Sonia and Rajiv's twentysomething daughter, Priyanka, who was easily the most charismatic thing about her mother's campaign. But unlike her predecessors, she may have to cut her political teeth in opposition rather than in power...
...India, an Italian woman who did not even become an Indian citizen until her mid-30s has suddenly been elevated to head of the Congress Party and leading candidate for Prime Minister. Yet Sonia Gandhi is not even a member of Parliament. Her chief qualification? Choice of spouse. Her late husband was Rajiv Gandhi, slain Prime Minister, himself the most recent example of India's experiment in monarchical rule within a democratic shell. The line is almost unbroken. The first Prime Minister (Nehru) begat a Prime Minister (daughter Indira) who begat another (son Rajiv). His children being too young...
...Sonia, however, is no pioneer of spousal succession. Corazon Aquino and Violeta Chamorro, both widows of assassinated opposition leaders, became Presidents, respectively, of the Philippines and Nicaragua. They did not, however, get there by default. They ascended by courageously making themselves the rallying point of a revolution. The one who did ascend for no other discernible reason than having shared the great one's bed is one Mrs. Peron of Argentina. Not Evita, who became a saint after her death but never actually ruled--no, the sorriest modern case of rule by consort is Peron's third wife, Isabel...
...campaign to eject the intruders also looked set to succeed if diplomacy failed. So where once it looked like a sticky wicket for Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Pakistan?s Kashmir adventure may yet turn out to have been just the tonic for his embattled government as he faces Sonia Gandhi in September?s election...