Muntazer al-Zaidi, who had ‘aimed’ at President Bush by hurling his shoes, now seeks a seat in Iraq’s Council of Representatives. It is exactly a decade after he hurled his ‘size 10’ shoes at the American President. Meanwhile, Iraq is going to elect as many as 328 members on May 12.
In 2008, he had shown his anger against President Bush for the US troops’ ‘illegally occupation’ of his country. At that time, he was an Iraqi journalist working for the Egypt-based al-Baghdadia TV network. However, he missed hitting Mr Bush on both the attempts.
Iraq’s then-PM, Nouri-al-Maliki, ‘shielded’ President Bush – saving the foreign dignitary from being even slightly hurt. Anyway, I think his target wasn’t exactly accurate either.
Attaining publicity through impolite actions has been an accepted trend in the political sphere. However, none at that time would probably have thought that the shoe-hurler would, one day, want to be elected in the country’s Council of Representatives.
Perhaps, back in those days, he thought quite differently, but today, it would seem that his present goal is quite political. After all, when it comes to politics, be it in India or in Iraq, people do tend to think in a similar fashion.
Irrespective of whether Muntazer turns out to be a successful politician or not, the bottom line is that he set a new precedent when it comes to insulting high-level politicians – by throwing his shoes twice, an act for which he was jailed for nine months. And as mentioned above, due to the close relation and similarity in political circles and behaviours across countries, India too has seen a number of instances of shoe-hurling, after Muntazer’s iconic act.
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