This move has bestowed power and money on certain figures within these ethnic communities – but it has also enabled successive governments to pretend that racism is no longer the problem.
The message to messrs Mousavi, Khatami and Karroubi (the steadfast and so-far united leaders of the green movement) is clear; do not confuse popularity with power – it is the system that has bestowed power upon you and in defying it you are close to being beyond the pale.
L.Paul Bremer III pronounced the country a better place than the one once littered with Saddam Hussein's torture chambers, thanked the officials who had served with him on the now defunct Coalition Provisional Authority, bestowed power on the new Iraqi prime minister, Iyad Allawi, and was gone.
In 1889 the British government granted a charter to Rhodes's British South Africa Company (BSAC), bestowing powers of administration and enabling it to stake claims to African territory at the expense of other European powers.
Asian cultures have deified this cat, bestowing powers beyond those of any worldly animal.
Rather than bestowing power privately upon his new cabinet, he inaugurated them on live television.
They regard the election as simply a means of formally bestowing power on a man who has run the show behind the scenes since July.
More than a hundred years ago, Andrew Jackson also believed that bestowing power and responsibility upon a single bank was the cause of inflation and other perceived evils.
I had thought we had dispensed with this nonsense, but it would seem that as long as we condemn a video before we condemn a violent reaction to it, we'll always be bestowing power upon those who wish to pass this kind of law.
They placed heavy emphasis on visions in which a guardian spirit adopted the individual and bestowed special powers upon him or her so long as certain prescribed laws or practices were observed.
The three presidents who ruled Egypt before the revolution, along with their defence ministers, all had military backgrounds and bestowed unrivalled powers and benefits on the armed forces, particularly Hosni Mubarak.
