Web 2.0-savvy Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is inspiring politicians all over the world.
By Zafar Anjum
14 Nov 2008
In the wake of the historic win of Barack Obama as the first African-American US president, editors and politicians in all multi-ethnic and multi-racial countries are asking two pertinent questions: one, when will their country elect a member of the minority as their country’s leader; and two, how can they (politicians) harness the power of the Web to connect to the young voters and raise funds.
While the first question is more about fairness in a political system, the second question is about being technology savvy—which in our given times—can highly influence a candidate’s performance at the hustings.
As far as the first issue is concerned, the American political system is different from the British parliamentary system that is practised in most Commonwealth democracies, including India which is the world’s largest democracy (in terms of population). Even Singapore, with a corruption-free, meritocracy-based transparent government, has a political system different from that of America, and yet it has a president from the minority community.
In fact, many Asian countries have already shown political sensitivity to race and gender issues. India provided universal adult suffrage to all its males and females when it became independent, while it took UK decades before it could extend the voting rights to its female citizens. India had Indira Gandhi as its prime minister before Britain had Margaret Thatcher. America has yet to catch up with countries such as India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Indonesia and even Bangladesh on this score.
Many in India have been raising the question: when will India have its Obama? The fact is India already has its Obama in the form of prime minister Manmohan Singh, a Sikh (member of the minority community) by faith.
Harnessing the power of the Web
Coming to the second issue, Obama has clearly proven that for politicians to run successful campaigns, Web 2.0 is the way to go.
Writing in the Network World, Scott Bradner noted: “He (Obama) involved and organised hundreds of thousands of volunteers and raised hundreds of million dollars using the Internet. Obama had five times as many videos on his YouTube channel than John McCain did. More than six million people have viewed Obama's speech on race relations and viewing time on YouTube for Obama's official videos is claimed to total 14.5 million hours. Another impressive statistic is that the Obama campaign scheduled 150,000 events, big and small, though the Internet.”
Impressive indeed. Obama outperformed his rival McCain’s e-campaign in every possible way. The latest is that Barack Obama's Web site had better uptime than rival John McCain's. While Obama's Web site never went down in the six months prior to the 4 November election, McCain's was offline for nearly two hours in total—never for more than 25 minutes at a stretch—during the six-month period. Which is not bad: McCain’s site managed to be up 99.96 per cent of the time.
After Obama’s win, Singapore media was agog with the news of political parties considering to adopt Web 2.0 strategies. In India, member of opposition party (Bharatiya Janata Party) and former home minister of the country, L. K. Advani has launched the so-called ‘biggest political Web site of the country’ (http://www.lkadvani.in/). Though unlike Obama, Advani is 81 years old, he is also barracking the mantra of change. ‘The nation is poised for a change’—greets the Web site’s slogan.
“I am sure that this initiative would bring good results as it has brought good results for Obama,” said a political heavyweight after the launch of the Web site.
Even Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd has launched a new Web site, KevinPm.com.au, replacing his kevin07 Web site. Like Obama’s, the site “leans heavily towards social media and networking tools,” noted Julian Bajkowski in his MIS Australia blog. Kevin, says Julian, is even going to tweet (using Twitter). Like what the hell Kevin is going to Twitter about, asks Julian.
Well, we don’t know yet.
Be it Obama or any other politician, it is connecting with people that matters. Clearly, Obama has shown a way. Most politicians may not have the passion, intelligence, sincerity and eloquence of Obama but they can surely learn a few tricks from his successful e-campaign.
Zafar Anjum is the online editor of MIS Asia portal.
