Comment Thursday, July 31, 2003 CHARLES ONYANGO-OBBO / WHAT OTHERS SAY Send us your young men, your . . .Mr Berlusconi's comeuppance came in the form of someone rather closer home. In fact in his bedroom. The loud-mouthed Italian Premier startled many people when, during a press conference, he accused his wife, the still-gorgeous Veronica Lario, of cheating on him. Things haven’t been upbeat between Berlusconi and the First Lady. For example, he was one of the staunchest supporters of the American-led war against Iraq. Veronica, on the other hand, was one of the most high-profile Italian critics of the war. So what does Berlusconi do? During a press conference with Denmark’s dashing young prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, he shocked his guest when he said: "Rasmussen is the most handsome prime minister in Europe. I think I will introduce him to my wife because he is even more handsome than Cacciari". Mr Massimo Cacciari is alleged to be the First Lady’s secret lover. In choosing him, Veronica seems to have been looking for the very opposite of her husband. Berlusconi is bald, a conservative who’s viewed by his opponents as a crooked politician, an ultra-capitalist, and a billionaire – one of Italy’s richest men. Cacciari is shaggy, bearded, and a Marxist philosopher. Berlusconi himself is not just a cuckolded husband who goes home to sulk after work. According to The Independent, he seems to have conveniently arranged for photographers to get through his famed tight security while he was holidaying (without Veronica) at his villa in Sardinia. He wasn’t alone. He was photographed, we learn, "relaxing in the company of his shiny new personal assistant and secretary Francesca Romana Impiglia, aged 21, a stunning, high-bosomed, fine-boned blonde". Veronica is 40 something. Veronica, who lives in a villa in Milan, however, takes the crown for being the high priestess of subtlety and the tongue-in-cheek remark. She doesn’t see Berlusconi that much now that he is prime minister and spends most of his time in Rome. They speak by telephone, she told a journalist, and "sometimes I can even see him on TV", she said richly. And what about the rumoured affair with philosopher Cacciari? Her daughter Barbara, she said, goes to San Raffaele University. Now get this. Cacciari teaches at San Raffaele. And Veronica’s girl studies, you guessed it, philosophy. Without any prompting, The Independent says, she described it as an "ideal situation". The late Wahome Mutahi (Whispers) might have said: "Being neither too clever nor too foolish, I concluded that Veronica was saying that Cacciari was the new Kabaka in her life". Rest in peace, Whis. India has a new heroine who’s forcing the country to think hard about what happens to people who want to marry and have children. She is Nisha Sharma. Nisha walked away from a wedding because the groom and his parents demanded dowry a few minutes to the event after promising not to. Though the dowry system has been illegal in India for 40 years, it is rampant Ð and getting out of control. Girls marrying men whose families think they are "something", pay anything between the equivalent of KSh2 million to Sh10 million. However, even after that initial payment, the husband might want a TV to watch the World Cup, for example, and demand it as dowry from his wife’s parents. Failure to pay could result in severe beating, burning, and gruesome murder. When some men are broke, it’s been reported that they kill off the old wife and marry a new one - and pocket the dowry. They then get rid of that one, find another one, and collect more dowry. In 2001, husbands and in-laws killed nearly 7,000 women because of inadequate dowry payment. In Iraq, the Rev Ikram Mehanni of the John Calvin Presbyterian Church in Baghdad, must be looking on the goings-on in India with very mixed emotions. He is facing a different problem. Because of years of war (beginning with the Iraq-Iran war, the first US-led war against Iraq in 1991, the UN economic sanctions, and the recent Gulf war), most Iraqi men of marriageable age have either died, been crippled, or have left the country. As a result, there is a severe shortage of men in the country, and many single women about. In the 1970s and 1980s, Rev Mehanni used to do five marriages a year (not bad given the small number of Presbyterians in Iraq). But since 2000, reports The Christian Science Monitor, "not a single couple has walked down the aisle at John Calvin Presbyterian Church". While most talk of Iraq's reconstruction centres on oil, food aid, and the sorting out of religious tensions, the pastor’s wife, Cecille Mehanni, told publication that she thinks the international community should be giving Iraq a more basic type of aid: "It's time for you to send us young men for our ladies to get married," says Cecile. We go out with a salute to the young people of the world. When we think of teenagers, we tend to have images of fellows who wear oversize T-shirts and shoes, and worship musicians with names like Nameless and 50 Cent. Then along came William Pratt, an 18-year old American lad. Pratt has stirred things up a bit by joining the long list of candidates for Governor of California. Candidates for the governorship need to gather 65 signatures of registered voters, and pay a fee of $3,500 by August 9 to get their name on the ballot. Collecting more signatures can lower that fee. Pratt is trying for 10,000 signatures for a full fee waiver. He doesn’t want to spend the $3,500 because, he says, he has more important things to do with the money - like buying a laptop computer for college. It had been expected that the actor Arnold Schwarzenegger would be vying for the job too. However. it was announced on Tuesday that he wouldn’t make a bid, news that must have buoyed Pratt’s camp, because it means he would avoid early termination. Though he is 18, Pratt is no newcomer to the rough and tumble of politics. He lost six elections for student congress in high school. Which makes him only a little less like a man who is old enough to be his grandfather - President Mwai Kibaki. Look where trying, trying, and trying again got Mwai. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mr Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group’s managing editor for media convergence and syndication. |
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