Allure of hot Presidents

By Kariuki Muthui

No one ever won an election simply because they were good looking. This is not an issue that usually exercises the tops of voters’ minds.

There is a blog however that aims to change all that. So it has ranked the current leaders of the world according to hotness.

Ukraine Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.She is the hottest leader in the world

The blog is www.hottestheadsofstate.wordpress.com. Its founders, who simply call themselves JD and Kate, aren’t too concerned about leaders who turn around their economies or those with an effective political manifesto. To them what matters is whether the man or woman in question is hot.

JD puts it succinctly: "The people have a right to be free from the tyranny of ugly leaders."

It’s certainly an interesting perspective on political representation, one which throws open a metaphysical window into a parallel universe in which Joseph Kabila and the Prime Minister of Norway rank several places above Barack Obama.

Never mind that the former sits atop the rubble of a failed Central African banana republic, the other manages a quiet snow drenched European country, while the latter commands an annual budget bigger than the GDP of France, this on top of a 14 trillion dollar economy.

It is a surreal place indeed, this universe, in which one is forced to contemplate matronly women, geriatric men and tin pot dictators as sex symbols.

Ugliest leader

Anyway, because you’re wondering, our President Kibaki is the 123rd hottest leader in the world. You might be glad to know that our President is hotter than many African leaders.

The ugliest leader in Africa, according to JD and Kate, is Robert Mugabe. He is closely followed by Omar el Bashir of Sudan, Bingu wa Mutharika of Malawi, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia and Ismail Omar Guelleh of Djibouti.

You have to feel sorry for Bingu wa Mutharika. The guy doesn’t deserve to be in this kind of company. Robert Mugabe has destroyed a beautiful country, Omar el Bashir has been indicted by The Hague for genocide, while Ben Ali and Omar Guelleh are seen as oppressive dictators.

Bingu wa Mutharika, on the other hand, has transformed Malawi into a net exporter of food. But JD and Kate don’t care; it’s all about looks.

That said, it’s difficult to disagree with their choice of the world’s hottest leader: Yulia Tymoshenko, the Prime Minister of Ukraine.

As Prime Ministers go, Ms Tymoshenko is a goddess. Take her for granted at your peril though because, like our Prime Minister Raila Odinga, she came to power through revolutionary means and like him, she is extremely ambitious.

Unlike Raila, however, who gets along wonderfully with number 123, Ms Tymoshenko is constantly at loggerheads with her President.

It beats me why the President of Ukraine is unable to get along with a woman so lovely. Does he not understand that her gorgeousness is a strategic weapon for Ukraine?

Maybe he has forgotten that his own looks were ruined after Russian agents allegedly attempted to assassinate him with a poison, which instead destroyed his face.

Girl power

The pickings of hotness in the ranks of global leadership are very thin indeed. One must lament the chauvinism that still pervades politics.

US President Barrack Obama 15th hottest leader. Photos/Courtesy

It’s packed with men, most of them quite old and, quite frankly, who lumber around with the obesity of age. I never saw it before, but now I realise that we’ve been short-changed.

If the world is in such an awful state, it’s because there are too few women in authority. Why do we underestimate the political usefulness, indeed the power, of beautiful women?

Cleopatra protected Egypt by seducing a powerful Roman General. And Delilah single handedly took down the strongest man in the world, Samson, whom even whole armies feared to confront.

Imagine if Esther Passaris, the siren of Embakasi, was our President.

Our famously randy MPs would probably fall over themselves to please her. In a flash, a new constitution would be enacted, Mau forest replanted and the creed of tribalism recanted. Anything she asked they would do, because they would all have a crush on her.

Unfortunately, chauvinists still abound. Dickson, an engineer with a local company pontificates over a bottle of beer that "the first time a man allowed a woman to exercise leadership, Eve convinced Adam to eat the forbidden fruit. The rest was disaster!"

That may well be what the Bible says, but you’ve got to let bygones be bygones. Especially when a country like Argentina strikes the jackpot and lands a President like Cristina Fern·ndez de Kirchne.

This Commander-in-Chief may have control over all weapons in Argentina, but she’s a sex bomb herself.

Back here at home

Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila, the hottest President in Africa

, the notoriously hard folks of Embakasi fell so hard for Passaris that her campaign slogan became ‘supuu’—a beauty. Even Prime Minister Raila Odinga joined the bandwagon and repeatedly chanted ‘supuu’ throughout the battle for that constituency.

Never mind that when VP Kalonzo Musyoka once lead him in the opinion polls he had acidly remarked that leadership is not a contest of handsomeness.

It’s a pity that Passaris lost. It’s too bad that up to 2012, we will be subjected to the stone throwing antics of Ferdinand Waititu.

Still, it could be worse. We could be North Korea where this article would never be published, probably because the ‘dear leader’, Kim Jong Il, is ranked the ugliest in the world.