By Jeeh Wanjurah
Rather than waste his credibility with tales of how political enemies manipulated his wife into lodging complains of spousal violence, Justus Mugali could do with some vote-catching imagination.
Apparently, the beating reported at a police station by the Shinyalu MPs wife, a high school teacher, was her idea of rehearsing for the coming secondary schools drama festival. Mugali says as Shinyalu Husband No 1 and Father No 1, he abandoned important constituency duties and rushed to the station to personally deal with whomever had dared assault his loved one only to be told the whole thing was a misunderstood joke.
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Cock-and-bull stories tax truth. Mugali therefore needs some political insurance against the doubting Thomasses and bad publicity. He should open his eyes to the silver lining in the reported domestic violence cloud. He should be encouraged to publicly bear the wrong victim cross and to hog the attendant sympathies. He must cast his embarrassing portrayal in the media as a wife-beater as his three days on the cross.
Your ordinary Shinyalu voter may not give a hoot if Mheshimiwa beats his wife. In fact, such allegations could actually build Mugali politically. Potential voters could find solace in the evidence that like them, he is also natural; that he shares their suffering of difficult wives; that he is therefore one of their own. Battered wives could like him too because of manifesting the same uselessness as their husbands.
But Mugali cannot be sure of such boon when the likes of Fida and other domestic relationship referees are in town. If his real political enemies chose to hype his bestiality, it could spell trouble in 2012. His latest trials should ideally deliver some political resurrection.
For inspiration, he can refer to the Pope and a certain Irish woman, Iris Robinson. We know from Mugalis mouth that his wife is capable of unleashing unprovoked violence.
When initially confronted with allegations of spousal battering, he claimed to have heard that she had beaten up her employees for no apparent reason. If it happens elsewhere, it can surely happen at home.
There are few things that can rally political sympathies for a man than documented husband battery. Even violence that is regularly meted out by a woman who is not necessarily your wife is support fodder. When a disturbed woman floored the Pope recently, faithful and conservative wives posted photos of their Mothers Union lingerie on the Pontiffs Facebook page in commiseration. Men too were not left out in the outpouring of sympathies. Even Silvio Berlusconi sent a sympathy card with a photo of him nursing his broken lips with the help of two bikini-clad teenage girls.
Mrs Robinson is a former Irish Minister and MP; a wife of 40 years of Peter Robinson, the North Ireland First Minister. The 60 year-old has brought down the First Family with sexual infamy and further risks ruining a fragile peace process and a delicately balanced coalition government. She took her deathbed promise to be a bosom guardian to the teenage son of a family friend rather literally that she ended up bedding the boy. Besides, Iris, a Protestant, used her political clout and management position in the municipal council to secure her Catholic toy boy a hotel premise and a 50,000 (Sh61.5 million) soft loan from friends.
When her husband found out, she resulted to the kind of emotional blackmail guilty wives excel in: deflecting blame with dramatised penitence. She reportedly tried to commit suicide. Loud mouths with the help of the local Maendeleo Ya Wanawake have forced her cuckolded husband to resign because he did not stay by her side long enough to recite the “Its Ok honey, we are in this together; I still love you!”
So we now know wives, too, cheat and beat and seek public sympathies by portraying their otherwise doting husbands as bad guys!
Mugali must be wary of this. Besides, men will love him for being the incarnation of the underreported and growing women aggression.
Without his suits, he looks like the sort of a guy you would never want to mess up with if you value your jaws. He also boasts a tough, village upbringing where gender order is presumably never in doubt.
You can imagine the outpouring of voters sympathies for a village boy who surmounts a deprived childhood only to be humbled by domestic violence and a crybaby spouse!
source.standard.ke
