Developing countries politicians on Facebook: Who are they?

An advert for a Gabonese political candidate popped up on my Facebook homepage, and got me asking - are developing countries politicians using Web 2.0? If so, who?

Ever since US politicians discovered Web 2.0 and started blogging, posting and tweeting (and one John Kerry thought it was a good idea to physically go to the Facebook HQ, for some reason), Politicians around the world have been catching up fast. And developing countries, unsurprisingly, are following suit - with a twist.

Besides the obvious goals of engaging with a young and often apolitical demographic, and putting a ‘human face’ on a cold public persona, social media also offers a platform for smaller candidates on a shoestring budget - with sometimes remarkable results (if not always successful).

In developing countries, where the Government often hogs the airwaves and curtails opposing and dissenting opinions, the internet serves at bypassing government control.

As such, social media has been used as a platform for expressing preferences or disagreements vis-a-vis politicians and policies they normally wouldn’t have been aired given a climate of opinion censorship, and more interestingly as a means of organising among opposition and demonstrators.

Iran’s recent ‘green’ movement comes to mind of course, but before it does Lebanon’s constant political mess , and Egypt’s ‘6^th of April’ movement.

Were you there?

Developing country politicians took their time but are now getting on board, too.

I browsed through the first 1000+ “Politicians” fan pages on Facebook, looking for the developing country politicos trying to communicate via social media. That goes all the way down to Fan pages with roughly 2500 followers, which is a reasonable cutting point - below that, it’s hard to consider a group really influential.

So who are those e-politicians??

- They mainly come from middle-income countries. Unsurprising, given the necessity of a critical mass of a computer-literate audience, along with a reasonable internet penetration.

- The vast majority come from countries using a Latin-based alphabet. That I found pretty interesting, but logical: Facebook and others were only in English for the longest time. Most social media users also use English, even non-Engish-natives. Furthermore, many web clients only support the Latin alphabet.

- Some major developing countries seem to be completely absent, potentially because Facebook penetration remains limited. China, for instance, has its local and more popular equivalent website, called Xiaonei (校內). India also is a notable absence, which I fail to explain. Perhaps it’s because of the popularity of other social networking websites (notably Orkut, Hi5, and India’s own Bigadda).

- Autocracies don’t breed politicians. There are therefore no political campaigns in China or in Saudi Arabia; and since politicians in office are not accountable to their electorate, they feel no necessity to communicate with them either.

This is part of the reason why only Lebanon stands out from the Arab world with a strong online political presence (though mainly fan groups; very few politicians actually online).

Quick methodology note:

I only included pages endorsed or maintained by the politicians themselves. As such, unofficial fan or support groups were omitted. Also, all those supporting dead people, even if their supporters would vote them in from the grave, were also omitted.

I suspect many politicians have failed to reconvert into ‘Fan pages’ and still use basic profiles or groups. Those are unfortunately outside of my search area - because it would take me forever to track them down.

So without further ado..

Those are your politicians, divided by continent.

Is yours in the list??

I surely missed some - feel free to add them in the comments section.

Latin America seems to be ahead of the curve in this respect.

Sebastian Pinera('s PR team), running for Chile’s 2010, regularly posts declarations, videos and links on his page. Some people are no fans of him, for that matter.

Also in the same country, known eccentric millionaire Leonardo Farkas, sports a haircut from the eighties but calls himself the “2.0 candidate for new politics in Chile” and boasts over 300,000 supporters.

Another candidate, youthful Marco Enrique-Ominami - running on a ‘Los Jóvenes al Poder’ platform, somehow - shares personal and work updates with his supporters.

Colombia’s Segio Fajardo only puts links on his official facebook account but I’m including him because I like the guy. Smart cookie he is. He tweets, though. (and follows me, so he has to be in here).

Also in Colombia, the website of Presidential hopeful Gustavo Petro has 4 Warhol-esque pictures of himself as a banner. His facebook photo looks more like a stand-up comedian.

Still in Colombia, MP David Luna posts photos and links - my guess is he's going for an Anderson Cooper look. He ends up looking like the guy trying to sell you a set of knives for $99.99 at a 3 AM television informercial.

Mexico’s governor of the state Nayarit, Ney González Sánchez also has a page where he posts photos from his phone, uploads pretty videos of the region, and shares photos of the newborns in his family.

In Argentina, politician Gabriela Michetti just loves to upload videos of herself.

Juan Cabandié’s status was “Pensando”. Yeah, that will get you elected as Buenos Aires’ mayor alright.

In Asia:

Iran’s Mir Hossein Mousavi’s endorsed Facebook profile (and Twitter account) has been immensely active since before the elections.

Also in Iran, Reza Pahlavi - yes, that Pahlavi - has found a new breath of interest in him since the June 12 elections, and has been blogging and posting away from, ehemm, Maryland.

Malaysia has a surprisingly large number of active politicians. (Sheema, thank you!!)

Mahatir bin Mohamad maintains a blog, twitter account, and a facebook fan page.

Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s facebook fan page gives a few smiling photos of him, and an RSS feed from his blog.

MP Nurul Izzah Anwar - his daughter - who blogs, facebooks (not very often though) and tweets frequently, about arbitrary executions - and finding a name for her newborn.

Opposition MP and blogoholic Lim Kit Siang loves his facebook page.

Malaysia’s “Sassy MP” (self-attributed title, I’m afraid) Teresa Kok informs us that her favourite quote is "If you want breakfast in bed, then go sleep in the kitchen."

This douche is actually an elected politician. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

MP and former minister Azalina Othman posts comments, photos, and uses a funny mix of Malay and English to communicate with readers.

Indonesia also has a decent online political presence, aside from the numerous support groups for SBY.

Indonesian politician Prabowo Subianto also has a pretty snappy facebook page which he also updates regularly with his ‘Good morning Indonesia’ notes. Megawati Soekarno’s website also endorses the same facebook page.

Rest of Asia:

Syed Mustafa Kamal (sorry, ‘Mayor Syed’) changed his fan page after elections to include his title as Mayor of Karachi. He updates his status daily, if not more often. When does he work as mayor then??

Thai prime minister Abhisit Vejajiva has an official page which he updated twice - one of them to say that “Abhisit is working hard”. Apparently, 1,506 people found it worthy of thumbs up.

Philippines’ Francis ‘Chiz’ Escudero has a page (or three) on every website that will let him have one. Facebook included, naturally.

Azerbaijani MP Ganire Pasayeva (or, in Azerbaijani, Gənirə Paşayeva) posts the occasional link on her page.

Failed Dhaka mayoral candidate Chowdhury Irad Ahmed Siddiky is still posting as often as a bored 14 year old girl.

Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed is probably the highest ranking official on this list to have an officially endorsed Facebook page (at least it seems to be).

The updates of Andra Pradesh politician Jayaprakash Narayan mainly concern his amazement at the growing number of fans. (yawn).

Sub-Saharan Africa:

Nigeria’s Lagos Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola has a facebook page where he addresses readers as ‘dear citizens of Nigeria’, though his page has been idle for several months.

Nigerian presidential candidate Pat Utomi has a very noisy website, and prefaces his videos with a green ‘Utomi TV’ banner that reminds me of the X-files. And of course a facebook page to compile all this.

Zimbabwe’s prime minister Morgan Tsavangirai’s page owes its followership, most probably, to the internationalization of the last Zimbabwean elections. Occasional messages are posted.

Bruno Ben-Moubamba, candidate for the next Gabonese presidential elections (after, it is worth remembering, Omar Bongo Ondimba’s 42-year reign) went a step further and actually bought advertising space on Facebook: his smart smiling face hence appears on the screen of some facebook users who have not expressed any particular interest for Gabonese politics.

Ledama Olekina, who hopes to win Kenya’s presidential elections in 2012, has a strangely Obamesque feel to his blog - when you see his facebook photo, you’ll know it wasn’t fortuitous.

Kenyan Minister of Tourism Najib Balala also posts and links often on his page.

She’s not a politician but I bet she will be: Kenyan businesswoman Esther Passaris posts regularly about local political issues. All she needs to do now is get rid of the photos on her blog where she looks like a renegade from Kaoma.

Ghana president John Atta Mills endorsed, during the presidential campaign, a facebook page as well. It's been idle since.

Europe:

Kosova's Albin Kurti, of the anti-UN group “Vetevendosje!” maintains an online presence. No one told him that Kosovo is already independent, perhaps. Notes are updates regularly.

Turkey has numerous support groups for all sorts of national, regional and local politicians - dead or alive. And Ataturk probably has a dozen just for himself. However, these profiles seem to never be endorsed by the politicians, who do not communicate through them with their followership. I’m surprised.

Turkey also has a noticeable number of ‘in memoriam’ fan sites, such as this one.

In the Arab world,

Queen Rania of Jordan, of course, comes ahead with more than 70,000 fans.

And her profile photo is from the day I met her. I swear.

(Wait a second as I click ‘become a fan’...)

Rania, fly away with me..

Lebanese Minister Ziyad Baroud has a page but has no updates (though I believe it is an ‘official’ page).

Lebanese opposition leader Michel Aoun may have a page here - the notes sound authoritative enough.

And Lebanese MP Misbah Ahdab updates his page regularly, though he speaks a lot to say nothing. Eh.

As for Egypt,

Opposition leader Ayman Nour is the notable online political presence - with 3700 ‘friends’. Occasional comments and links are posted.

The largest fan group however is for Amr Moussa, with nearly 5000 supporters.

The second is, surprisingly enough, for MP Hisham Talaat Mostafa, currently incarcerated for complicity to murder, with over 3100 members.

A Hosni Moubarak fan group is also there, with 1800 fans.

And to end on a more entertaining note, those are some notable profiles posted as Politicians.

Emilie Turunen is 26 and a Member of the European Parliament for Denmark, and uses smiley faces. I feel very old now.

Barack Obama’s teleprompter has 3282 supporters. Perfect punctuation sells, clearly.

Santa Claus - listed as a ‘politician’ as well - has 2500 fans, on top of his 5000 ‘friends’. With that, the man could be an MP.

William Wallace seeks freedooooooom! Online.

Montazer El Zaidy has 6500 shoe-throwers behind him.

And finally,

Louis the XXth, or the wet dream of French royalists. People address him as ‘Your Majesty’ or ‘Your Eminence’.

Wow, that was one long post.

Funniest searches leading to this blog !

My sitemeter.com account informs me on occasion of the number of hits reaching my blog - and how they got there.

I occasionally encounter the strangest searches that lead to my blog -- some are so weird, that they deserve to have a permanent sidebar for them.

Unveiling the brand new "These searches brought folks here. Seriously." section, I am featuring some of the zaniest search results; I'll be updating the sidebar regularly, of course. They keep coming.

These are my inaugural funny searches:

inshallah in jewish - because, as everyone knows, I am fluent in jewish

fucking instrument condom information in urdu - I'm giggling too much to address the main query, but If you need info about fucking instruments in urdu, shouldn't you google it, I dunno, IN URDU? Urdu speakers, how would you say 'fucking instrument condom information'?

ugli tel aviv - No!! It's not ugli! It's pretti!

ازاي اشد الرجل ليه - (That reads 'How to attract a man to me'. I dunno, dear, try base instincts - sex, food, sex, football, and sex.

speak דבר - That reads 'speak speak'. Or 'speak thing'. I admit, I'm at a loss.

Jeffrey sachs and mahmoud darwish - Okay, an odd couple. Sachwish? Beats Brangelina, if you ask me

can i get reinfected with swine flu? Wow. S/he's ahead of the discussion curve. Let's see you survive the first time, shall we?

mo said what is standing? israeli intelligence - Now from the context I'm guessing that 'mo said' was supposed to be 'mossad', not asking the holy forces of google what wisdom yours truly has imparted. This said, still a rather unique query...

logo of islam - You mean the one we all have tattooed on our foreheads? Oh, that one.

who got married in srugim - I love it that my blog is a reference on Israeli television. I do.

Abu Dhabi hookers - What? You wish to use my blog for fornication purposes? Shame on you! This is a fucking pure and polite blog

kwalalamboor malaysia - That was supposed to be 'Kuala Lumpur'. Yes, I know.

nation of andorra not in Africa - Now that was either someone googling the Onion skit, or really inquiring whether the rumour he heard is true.. either way, thanks for the laugh!

Kinda-Autonomous Macau

Picture this setting: an Egyptian speaking in Spanish to a Chinese woman who's replying in Portuguese, under the bemused eye of her teenage son who provides the occasional English-Cantonese translation bridge when the Latin languages kinship fails to convey the meaning.

Welcome to Macau, China's 'kinda-autonomous' (©!!) region, which 500 years or so of Portuguese colonisation have given an undoubtedly unique feel, a sometimes tragic history, an odd street fusion cuisine, and some weird architecture that often has you wondering whether you're in China, Algarve, Hongkong, or Rome.


I'll dwell longer on its political status in a future post about Hongkong, where the topics seems more relevant. Here, with their Portuguese citizenship - Portugal gave its passport to all those born in Macau - and with their city's less strategically important economic role, Macau's people seems to have been spared the political drama that HK had to endure. But I digress.

I have been asking the lady, who, with her husband manages the Livraria Portuguesa of Macau, about the Portuguese, Lusophone, and Macanese communities (the latter being defined as the children of mixed Portuguese and Chinese couples).
You could hear a tinge of nostalgia in their voices.

"2 out of 3 Portuguese left after 1999", he said, in reference to the retrocession of the colony to China.
"Portuguese used to be the language of the government. Now, officially both Chinese and Portuguese are government languages but really, Chinese is dominant."

I picked up this book - a lovely collection of stories from a near yet distant past. And was out in the rain again - Portuguese colony it may have been, but that was a classic S.E. Asian typhoon I had on my hands (and head).

-----

Other than flying into Macau, the most obvious way to get there is by ferry from HongKong, which is the way I favoured.

After struggling with the customs officers who had seemingly never seen an Egyptian passport before (note that we're allowed visa-free access, hiya!), I was out to face the multitude of free shuttles that take you for free into one of the many casinos of the SAR. Because Macau also doubles as the Vegas of China, where wealthy and not-so-wealthy Hongkongers and mainland Chinese go and squander their yuans and HK dollars on the tables of the (needlessly) impressive Venitian, or the mythical Grand Lisboa.

Can you tell me this doesn't look like Via dei Condotti seen from the Spanish steps?
In the back left, that's the Grand Lisboa, by the way...

It's the Grand Lisboa shuttle that K and I took, and emerged in its main casino hall. And since I didn't gamble a penny - but got a free cup of tea, I can say that I beat the house. :)

We spent a little while watching people put their bets on Baccarat tables -- plenty, plenty of Baccarat tables, God knows why -- and listened to the Chinese onomatopoeias for joy (Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!) and disappointment (Rhooooooooooo!) before going out to town.


Everything is written in Chinese and Portuguese -- which we found absolutely hilarious! I mean, I could read the stuff! Plus the bilingual combinations were very funny - ("Sapataria Tai Fong"?? WTF?? :)




Colonial architecture, wave and mosaic pavements like Lisbon's, if Cantonese wasn't the language spoken on the street (and the humidity so damn oppressive) I could've forgotten where I was.



Anyways. Plenty of ginger candy, churches with dragons on them, a few Buddhist temples, a very cute Indonesian saleswoman (who asked me out for a Turkish kebab before selling me overpriced chines-ey stuff) and oh-so-plenty of good food later (highlight: bird's nest on an egg-tart. Kinda gross when you think of it but tasty), I was actually quite taken by the quiet city. Which is not as quiet as it is accused of being. Actually, I think I'd take a Macau over a Hongkong any day.

Coincidentally, I happen to be wearing this t-shirt at this very moment:

Says it all, right?

PS - Seems that I'm caving in to the pressure - I've uploaded some photos to Flickr.

Candle duty for Iran (a.k.a. The day the Paris sky turned green)

Small candles spell I R A N

I was standing on the side of the Trocadero plaza, the best vantage point for photos of the Eiffel tower, snapping photos of the demonstration in preparation, when a woman walked up to me, put a long candle in my hand, smilingly said something in Farsi and pointed at the huge candle composition that spelled IRAN - specifically at the bottom of the giant I, where no one was lighting the small candles.



I'm assigned to candle duty? I gladly indulged, of course.

me!

And for the next hour, I wasn't a bystander taking photos I thought would make an interesting blog post, where I would comment on the organisation and the pretty female demonstrators and make jokes about the green balloons and inhaling helium.

For an hour I was, infinitesimal as my contribution may be, one of them.

After a release of green balloons, shortly before sunset, we sat down and tended to the candles.


Save for the last 15 minutes, where people chanted in Farsi - I only joined at the 'Azadi' repetitive shout and just hummed and clapped along the rest of the chants - The entire event was largely silent, as we sat, reigniting the candles that the wind blew - 'IRAN' must shine throughout. And I came to think about the events of the past few weeks, and how my first journalistic 'neutrality' - the 'wait and figure out what happened' - had gradually eroded.

I'm simply stating that as a fact, and I don't feel bad about it really. I have taken sides and I was sitting amongst those whose side I have chosen.

So if I were to draw conclusions from the candle duty, they will be the following:

It takes a lot of people to keep the candles alight.

You will unavoidably burn yourself in the process.

There will always be an unwelcome gust of wind to blow away your candles. And trying to block it with your arm generally fails.

You may be tempted to let the candles die - 'what's the point anyway', you'll think.

Rest assured, you'll never be alone at the task.

If the job gets too hard, someone will always give you a hand.

And even if, at the end of the night, you ultimately fail and the wind emerges as the winner, you'll know deep down inside that, by God, you've given the wind a run for its money - and that you've held back long enough to make a difference.



NB: For more info about the Paris-based protests, check out here or here.