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Public figures seeking to mobilise funds are increasingly turning to social networking site Facebook in a foretaste of the important role the Internet will play in the next campaigns.
Two petitions were launched on the site in the past week, with Hague-bound journalist Joshua arap Sang and former Ikolomani MP Bonni Khalwale appealing to their supporters for donations.
Mr Khalwale faces a major challenge in his bid to recapture his seat in a by-election while Mr Sang is seeking legal aid in his battle to clear his name over claims he incited violence at the last elections.
“There is no doubt that Facebook will be a major tool for mobilising supporters at the next elections,” says George Njoroge, one of Kenya’s young IT innovators who is head of the East African Data Handlers firm.
“But attracting a large number of fans will not be enough to convert those numbers into votes. The most successful candidates will be those that engage their supporters regularly in the way that President Jonathan Goodluck has demonstrated in his campaigns in Nigeria. It will not be enough merely to have a passive presence.”
Facebook is an Internet site with more than 600 million users worldwide that allows people to form networks of “friends” to post updates, organise into groups and exchange messages.
Kenya is considered one of the countries with the highest levels of Internet usage in Africa and is third in the world, behind Russia and India, in terms of page views on websites by mobile phone users.
According to Opera Mini, producers of the technology that facilitates Internet usage on phones, the average Kenyan user browses 639 pages every month, comfortably the highest rate in Africa.
Martha Karua, Peter Kenneth and Samuel Poghisio are among politicians that regularly update their Facebook pages.
Analysts expect the 2012 elections to be the first major poll in which digital platforms such as Facebook, with nearly two million users in the country, play a prominent role.
Such sites have previously been used to mobilise funds and supporters in other countries, perhaps most famously by Democratic candidate Barack Obama in 2008.
The websites have been in the news recently as key tools used by the youths behind a wave of popular uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East.
The secret police supporting long-serving regimes in Egypt and Tunisia were unable to crack down on cells of supporters encouraging turnout at demonstrations.
The faceless nature of the Internet meant that the police could not track down opponents of Hosni Mubarak and Zine el Abidine Ben Ali in the same way that regime supporters could terrorise agitators meeting in cells during the Cold War.
But the democratic nature of the web, where users can post anything they wish with little moderation, also opens public figures to attacks on their Facebook pages.
This was a feature on display in reactions to the appeal launched by Shem Ochuodho for funds to support Mr Khalwale and on another backing Mr Sang.
The mood of posters was decidedly mixed. One Khalwale supporter said he would be happy to contribute, “the gentleman is a bull. he got my support”. Another said, “Bonny is the kind of parliamentarian Kenya needs, Count on my support.”
Several others scoffed at the fund raising appeal “Too many have fallen in your hands. What goes around, comes around! As you told those whom you shot down from grace, CARRY YOUR OWN CROSS!” Another one kept his contribution brief “Khalwale must go!”
The pattern was repeated on the Joshua arap Sang appeal page. Comments veered from the sympathetic “I wish him well” to the unamused “i'd rather fund- raise for beggars in the streets than to suspected criminals” while others chose to be philosophical “we shud learn to sacrifice a few lambs for slaughter to make room for others also to grow and thou will be blessed, none will be killed but a lesson will be taught to him and the world at large.”
Many such debates are expected to unfold in the next few months. And according to Mr Njoroge, those that stand the best chance of harnessing the power of the net are the political figures that expose themselves to “friends” early and regularly respond to their queries rather than wait to set up their stall shortly before the elections.
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