- None in this country has quite the same self-awareness and sense of mission, epitomised in the way he speaks of himself in the third person.
- He thinks he has a providential mission to fulfil.
- His identification with his country is so intense that he sees himself and the country as one.
- A stable regime is to be established by an extraordinary mixture of vision, stubbornness, chutzpah, political acumen and bluff.
- The country’s pride in itself, its intransigence, its historical and cultural heritage...alongside its charm, diplomatic skill and humanism: these traits and contradictions are all to be found in the man whose personalisation of patriotism can border on the irrational.
- He is profoundly attached to traditional values...but he is also a prophet of modernisation.
- He expounds grand principles and likes to appear as a leader set on a single, unwavering course.... A ruthless, calculating politician, he is a complete realist in all things,...
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