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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 Apr. - 5 May 1999 Issue No. 427 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 Apr. - 5 May 1999 Issue No. 427
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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|
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Focus Special Travel Sports People Features Living Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters
FOLLOWING inconclusive and bitter in-fighting and bargaining over a potential coalition to replace the right-wing Hindu-nationalist coalition government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, which was recently voted out of office, Indian President K R Narayanan finally threw in the towel on Monday and dissolved the lower house of parliament.A date for India's third election in three years is yet to be announced.
The Congress Party, headed by Sonia Ghandi, failed to convince smaller parties to support its plan to govern alone as a minority government. And Ghandi refused a broadly-backed plan to let popular 84-year-old communist leader Jyoti Basu head the government. Although the communists oppose the Congress Party's political platform and economic neo-liberalism, they consider the centrist party a lesser evil than Vajpayee's right-wing Bharatiya Jananata Party. Basu's Left Front government has ruled West Bengal since 1977.
In the picture a policeman stands guard outside Sonia Gandhi's house in New Delhi.
(photo: AP)
