Power, sex and divorce

Editorial-February 18, 2014

Sri Lankans are a creative lot in spite of their many failings. Their penchant for coining sobriquets for the animate and the inanimate alike is amazing. A tiny van is popularly known as One Shot because it is said to have zero chance of surviving a major accident. Another van is called Sadahatama Oba Mage—‘You are mine forever’—because it has no second-hand market. Maga Maruwa (‘road death’) is the nickname for the death-dealing private bus. A ubiquitous scooter popular among women has come to be dubbed ‘divorce bike’ in the southern province because some riders allegedly use it for extracurricular activities, as it were, and get found out.

Whether scooters are responsible for divorce we really don’t know. But, there is a vehicle for divorce we know of. It is political power which drives the wielders thereof mad by enhancing their libido and blinding them with lust. In this part of the world, social stigma attached to divorce usually prevents lecherous political leaders who pretend to be model husbands and fathers from ditching their wives for younger women, but in the West, where divorce is as common as marriage, politicians and their spouses at the end of their tether, kiss/fight and part.

Latest wire service dispatches speculate Russian President Vladimir Putin (61), who divorced his wife only last year, has married an Olympic gymnast, Alina Kabayeva. The world is agog for more news about them as initial reports are rather sketchy. What has kept the rumour mill working overtime is that Putin and the gymnast have been sighted with wedding rings albeit at two different venues. It is a case of putting two rings together, eh? US President Bill Clinton had no affair with any gymnast, but he turned the Oval Office into a gymnasium of sex and got caught with his pants down at a much younger age.

French President Francoise Hollande and his longtime companion Valérie Trierweiler—they had been only living together—separated the other day following a love-triangle scandal. Hollande was found to have an affair with an actress. His predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy had his first marriage ruined after becoming president. Whoever would have thought there would be rumours of President Barak Obama’s marriage being on the rocks? Is it that the media has blown his posing for a ‘selfie’ photograph with blonde Danish Prime Minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, at Mandela’s funeral and his close relationship with a singer out of proportion?

As for the correlation between power and politicians’ libido, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (77) of the bunga bunga fame is perhaps the best example. He was convicted last year of having paid for sex with an underage prostitute and abusing his power in 2010, when he was Prime Minister, and sentenced to seven years in jail. Debarred from holding public office again, he remains free because the appeal process is still on. His alleged indulgence in freakish orgies has been such that one wonders whether he is a direct descendant of Caligula Caesar.

In this country, we have had rulers with the genes of Kashyapa, the playboy king, who turned an otherwise dull-looking, monstrous rock obviously sitting in the wrong place, into a replica of Kuvera’s Alakamanda way back in the 5th Century AD.

Ancient monarchs who did not care a damn about the sanctity of marriage were no hypocrites unlike the modern-day lecherous potentates flaunting Victorian moral values for the public consumption while cheating on their spouses at every turn. Fidelity of most political leaders is lack of opportunity, we reckon. Aware that power was the most potent concupiscence booster the kings of yore made no bones about their licentiousness and had harems set up within their palace premises without going overseas or travelling incognito to gratify their carnal desires.

The only way political leaders could prevent power ruining their marriages and making old goats of them, we believe, is to ensure that it does not go to their heads. Power without control is disaster.