When Marie Sock opted to act on her thoughts of racing for the nation’s highest seat she certainly most have braced up for the worst.
However, whether she was prepared to weather this sort of storm remains a lingering question.
She might have known in her minds eye, the pockets of resistance and wave of antagonism that would thread her path from mainstream traditional opposition party followers apparently taking great offense for her audacity to believe.
Determined to infiltrate her camp and fish out scandals to discredit her with and cast to the wind her presidential ambition, three of her photos were made viral.
Inevitably or rather calculatingly, the entrepreneur turned the subject of online mockery amid torrential innuendos being rained down.
First, pictures of her considered, a source of eyebrows by Gambians standards, were posted aimed at getting her dismissed as “not president material”.
While this generated buzz, considering majority Gambians have definition for how a woman should be clad, it also showed great depths detractors are willing to go in desperate efforts to cast aspersions.
Admittedly, this move succeeded in getting under her skin, forcing the erstwhile St Joseph High School student into assuming an outlook different from the previous one she wore in her debut Fatu Network interview.
The preceding second and third public appearances saw her sporting a head tie to cover her blond haircut -an initiative suggesting she is either listening to the derides or has been coerced into inadvertently accepting her look in the first interview was faulty and thus far from in tandem with what a woman seeking the State House should look like.
Causing most stir among her released pictures is one displaying cleavage. The perverts among her burgeoning number of haters went to extent of circling her side boobs with the caption “not religious”.
While this remains a lackadaisical PR blunder, one thing is certain these collage of pictures will continue to be used to as weapon against her ambitious campaign.
A positive though is, Sock’s last weekend’s unveiling unraveled one charming thing – a character to be resolute.
“Right now I’m a woman. They will be saying let’s see what’s she’s got. Let’s see her paperwork but we’re all forgetting when all these male presidents that were going in nobody scrutinised them. But hey, I will take the beating because I’m a mother,” she said boldly fending off the blizzard of stereotyping.
