New Zealand: November 4, 2008 -Balaji - As New Zealand gears for the decisive date of November 8, one can't help, but remember the "decisive dates" in other parts of the world, and the players involved.

Politicians who play the decisive roles to get elected are same when they polarize the nation by words of "change" or "stability"; you can choose the lexicon of word, according to your political belief, but there seems to be contrast in their styles and customs.

Also, Helen Clark draws parallel with influential women politicians of our generation such as former United States First Lady Hillary Clinton, former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and the current ruling coalition leader in India, Sonia Gandhi. We can have a story for another day on former United Kingdom war-time PM Margaret Thatcher.

But, Helen Clark is easily approachable for a common man in New Zealand. Contrastingly, even the senior most leaders of the Congress Party needs a month in prior appointment to meet their party's president – Sonia Gandhi and India's so called "Shadow PM". Sonia Gandhi born in Italy married former Indian PM, Rajiv Gandhi and moved to India and she's also the daughter-in-law of Indira Gandhi. (These Gandhis are different from the 'Gandhi' whom the world knows better).

By inheriting the troubled legacy of her in-laws, Sonia Gandhi saw the assassination of both her mother-in-law in 1984 and her husband in 1991. Sonia Gandhi's resolve was tested when she decided to enter the politics in 1998, and her image improved when she renounced the PM post in 2004 on a decisive day even though her party won majority of votes.

Hitherto, Sonia Gandhi's involvement in politics was debated in India and the opposition parties wanted a law banning foreign born politicians to hold high offices.
In India's neighboring Pakistan, former PM Zuffar Ali Bhutto's daughter Benazir Bhutto, twice became PM in 1988 and 1995. When she was contesting for a third time, she was second time unlucky as after a decade of wilderness, the day she returned to Pakistan, on October 17, 2007, she survived assassination attempt but was assassinated on the decisive day of December 27, 2007.

Hillary Clinton needs no introduction. Despite being the wife of former US President Bill Clinton, her understanding of the politics was much better than her husband, though she lacked charisma and galvanizing power. In early 2007, political pundits predicted her return to White House but reality proved otherwise.

Hillary lost her party's nomination for the top post to an unknown former Chicago community worker, and a Senator of one year experience by named "Barack Obama", who was born to a Kenyan father in the remote part of the US – Hawaii. But he happened to be a shrewd politician when he borrowed the magical word "change" in the, lexicon of politics, which made Hillary and her husband to occupy White House for eight years. The whole world waits to see whether the only super power in "troubled times" would elect an African American as President.

On the decisive November 4, US will decide both its fate and the rest of the world, for the better half of this century.

Meanwhile, on the decisive November 8, we can fathom whether New Zealand National Party's John Key who has borrowed the word "change" from Barack Obama had done any justice to that.

(The writer is an international journalist who's presently studying a journalism in New Zealand)