He is the nephew of Sharad Pawar, a powerful minister in the federal government, and the leader of the NCP.
Mantel's Booker Prize-winning novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies chart the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, a powerful minister in the court of Henry VIII.
His wife, the powerful Minister of Minerals and Energy, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, has rallied to his defence, saying that she and her husband have more important work to do, serving the people of South Africa, rather than wasting time on mudslinging with comrades.
Narendra Modi, the powerful chief minister of Gujarat, a state in west India, wrote to the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, that the ban was anti-farmer.
In fact, both Vladimir Putin, the all-powerful prime minister, and Mr Medvedev have been fostering the cult of the state as the only force capable of making Russia great and respected once again.
China has charged once-powerful former Railways Minister Liu Zhijun with corruption and abuse of power, state media has reported.
BBC: Ex China rail minister Liu Zhijun charged with corruption
When the World Bank presented the evidence to the powerful deputy prime minister, Sok An, he angrily refused to read the report.
The finger on the trigger belonged to Josef Lux, the powerful deputy prime minister and leader of the Christian Democrats, the second-biggest party in the coalition.
Mohammed Fahim, the powerful Tajik defence minister, is said to be under pressure to lessen his grip on the country's security apparatus, and in particular, the National Security Directorate (NSD), the secret police.
Some donors are thought to have asked Mr Kibaki to sack the education minister, George Saitoti, a hangover from the Moi era, and to demote Chris Murungaru, the inept but powerful internal security minister who heads the Mount Kenya group.
ECONOMIST: Kenya's anti-corruption campaign is wooing back donors
On June 18th Obert Mpofu, Zimbabwe's powerful and wealthy minister of mines, told a meeting of his country's chamber of commerce that he had got a letter from the Kimberley Process demanding Mr Maguwu's immediate release if Zimbabwe were to be allowed to resume diamond trading.
In return, Mr Lieberman was given the powerful posts of foreign minister and deputy prime minister.
But the biggest proponent of IT in the country is its most powerful person, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.
One of the most powerful is Kemaleddin Heydarov, minister of emergencies with a flair for persuading pop stars to sing his compositions.
He believes that moves to create crop boards and give new draconian powers to the agriculture minister are signs of powerful anti-liberalisation forces in Tanzanian society.
It was in fact Mr Blair, and the prime minister's strangely powerful press spokesman, Alastair Campbell, who lopped off his head when they tired of trying to get a straight story out of him about Mr Hinduja.
Writing in the Sunday Nation, Gitau Warigi notes that President Kibaki is a member... so too is Education Minister George Saitoti and a powerful coterie of cabinet ministers.
Bank of Italy director general Fabrizio Saccomanni heads the powerful economy ministry and Emma Bonino is foreign minister.
Such is the price of provoking the septuagenarian Noboru Takeshita, a former prime minister who is still the most powerful figure in Japanese politics.
The current interim administration is headed by a Pushtun, Hamid Karzai, but dominated by Tajiks, including the defence minister, Mohammed Fahim, a powerful figure in his own right.
And Margaret Hodge, a Labour ex-minister, who now chairs the powerful Public Accounts Committee, has sent shudders through Whitehall, by insisting that civil servants must answer to Parliament for waste and inefficiency in government.
"Afghanistan will feel the change that Pakistan now has a strong and popular government, " Sartaj Aziz, a member of the PML (N)'s powerful central executive committee and a former foreign minister during Mr Sharif's second term, told the BBC.
That means it is not beholden to powerful lobbies (though some Italians see the prime minister, who was once an adviser to Goldman Sachs, as a representative of international big business, a charge he vigorously denies).
India's home-affairs minister, L.K. Advani (a powerful hawk), described the attackers as fedayeen but pointed no immediate finger at Pakistan.
He is the son of a powerful politician, Moses Mudamba Mudavadi, who served as a minister under President Daniel arap Moi.
Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979, British labor unions were quite powerful but labor markets were rigid, inflexible and in many ways uncompetitive.
Before Putin's election, the banking and media tycoon had helped finance the Kremlin's main opponents, powerful Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and his partner, former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov.
Not long ago it was hospitable to foreigners: As oil minister, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, an ally of powerful former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, in the late 1990s pushed through billions of dollars in agreements with Shell, France's Total, Italy's Eni, Schlumberger and Halliburton to develop large and technically challenging projects, such as Iran's huge South Pars field, which is believed to hold 7% of the world's natural gas supply.
Not too long ago it was hospitable to foreigners: As oil minister, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, an ally of powerful former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, in the late 1990s pushed through billions of dollars in agreements with Shell, France's Total, Italy's Eni, Schlumberger and Halliburton to develop large and technically challenging projects, such as Iran's huge South Pars field, which is believed to hold 7% of the world's natural gas supply.
He also has a powerful sponsor, Heizo Takenaka, the economics and financial-services minister.
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