A politician in Kenya, Mishi Mboko, has come up with a plan to get reluctant men to vote — she has asked women to withhold sex from their husbands until they show their voter’s card. According to a report by BBC, the women’s representative in Mombasa’s coastal city said it was the “best strategy” to adopt. According to Mboko, reluctant men might just rush to get themselves registered as voters if this strategy is used.
Reportedly, she said her husband will be far from affected by the strategy that she had devised because he had already registered. The registration ends on February 17.
Mboko’s party ODM is expected to be a part of an alliance of opposition parties that can challenge Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, who’s seeking a second term. Mboko believes if the supporters register in large numbers, there are more chances of the opposition winning against the incumbent government.
As bizarre as it sounds, this is not the first time that there has been a call for sex boycott in Kenya. In fact, they are quite common. After President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga and their allies had a fall out in 2009, women political activists chose abstinence as their weapon of protest to get them to reconcile.
Kenya’s bizarre custom has striking similarities to Lysistrata — an ancient comedy originally known to be performed in 411 BC in Athens. It’s a mission of a woman to bring an end to the Peloponnesian war in an unusual way. She convinces the women in Greece to not have sexual relations with their husbands and lovers as a way of negotiating peace.
