With tearful pleas to the masses and sycophants around her, Sonia Gandhi has nobly declined the chance to be Indian prime minister. But why did she not do so as soon as the result was known, and before billions were wiped off the Indian stock market?
The answer is that such melodramas are necessary to prime the political landscape for the behind-the-scenes manipulation that has been the hallmark of Mrs Gandhi's style since she was 'reluctantly' recruited into party politics a decade ago.
The only thing that remains to be seen with the 'Eva Peron-isation' of Indian politics is whether the economy will also follow Argentina's path, with the Congress party and its communist allies forging an unholy alliance to follow ruinous nationalistic economic policies.
The reality is that the rise of Mrs Gandhi, who even her supporters cannot accuse of possessing any intellectual or leadership qualities, proves that India is still a feudal monarchy where someone married to the right family can be chosen to be prime minister.
V.S. Naipaul, the Nobel prize-winning Indian author, wrote that Indians have been oppressed for so many centuries by foreign dynasties that they have lost any sense of racial memory; a sense of being separate people with the right to rule themselves.
That is why they could have let Mrs Gandhi, who lived in India for 15 years before bothering to apply for citizenship, rule. Born in Italy, she studied English in the city of Cambridge, and while working there as a waitress in a Greek restaurant, met Rajiv Gandhi, who was trying to get a degree from the university.