Gillian Moore

Now that the elec­tion date has been an­nounced, pol­i­tics are what every­one's talk­ing about. Even on Face­book, the mas­sive­ly pop­u­lar on­line so­cial net­work, the up­com­ing polls are mak­ing waves. For the last cou­ple of years, Face­book has been large­ly ig­nored by T&T politi­cians. In­stead, there was a no­table pres­ence of par­o­dy pro­files like "Ma­trick Pan­ning" and "Patos Man­ning", where some chose to post "fa­tigue," jokes and crit­i­cism. But for the most part, MPs and oth­ers in the po­lit­i­cal game left Face­book alone. More re­cent­ly, politi­cians such as Dr Tim Gopeesingh, Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar have start­ed pro­file pages, us­ing the ubiq­ui­tous net­work to ral­ly sup­port and get the word out on their var­i­ous agen­das.

Vot­ers' voic­es

Ever since the dis­so­lu­tion of Par­lia­ment, lo­cal Face­book users have been light­ing up their sta­tus up­dates with po­lit­i­cal state­ments, griev­ances and pi­cong. They've post­ed videos like Per­cy Vil­lafana's fa­mous stance, and youtube ca­lyp­soes like Stal­in's Vam­pire Year and Bal­ly's Par­ty Time. More than this, they've weighed in on who they will sup­port and whether it makes sense to vote at all.

Big ques­tions

Now, politi­cians are seiz­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to reach vot­ers with the pop­u­lar so­cial net­work. Kam­la's pro­file boasts 4960 friends, and her per­son­al quote is "Car­ing for peo­ple through choice, free­dom, en­ter­prise and strong de­fence." Gopeesingh's fan page lists dis­cus­sion top­ics in­clud­ing: "Con­tin­ue sup­port­ing Pan­day?" and Is Dr Tim Gopeesingh Work­ing For His Peo­ple?" To the first ques­tion, one Khalid Nab­bie re­spond­ed: "Mr Pan­day be­lieves that he can win back the sup­port to re­take the po­lit­i­cal leader of the UNC, or win back the sup­port of the back­bone of the UNC mem­ber­ship. Mr Pan­day will con­tin­ue on this quest un­til he dies. What has hap­pened was a fun­da­men­tal gen­er­a­tional shift in the pol­i­tics in Trinidad. Trinidad's pol­i­tics has evolved. The sons and daugh­ters have tak­en con­trol and not aban­doned, but re­tired the fa­ther. This is some­thing that can nev­er be turned back." There were no re­spons­es to the sec­ond is­sue.

Peo­ple's cham­pi­ons

Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan's fan page, which calls him "Cham­pi­on of the Peo­ple" shows he's not afraid to make a case for him­self. He, or the staffer who runs his fan page, has post­ed glow­ing tes­ti­mo­ni­als, like: "He is a charis­mat­ic in­di­vid­ual, blessed with em­pa­thet­ic un­der­stand­ing," and "Dr Ram­bachan is a prob­lem-solver and the range of his an­a­lyt­ic and in­tu­itive abil­i­ties are al­ways an im­mense source of in­spi­ra­tion." One page, en­ti­tled Jack Warn­er, Best Par­lia­men­tar­i­an in T&T, asks, "Which oth­er T&T politi­cian rou­tine­ly puts his mon­ey where is mouth is? Jack Warn­er walks the walk and talks the talk. A self made mil­lion­aire, he nev­er hes­i­tates to help oth­ers in need re­gard­less of race, re­li­gion or po­lit­i­cal per­sua­sion." It has 263 fans.

Face­book flow­ers

On Dr Kei­th Row­ley's pro­file page, on the af­ter­noon of April 15, af­ter his screen­ing as a can­di­date for the PNM, his sta­tus read: "We await the re­sults. Thank you for all your sup­port as I wish to con­tin­ue to serve my Con­stituents." Fol­low­ing his be­ing ap­proved to stand for the Diego Mar­tin con­stituen­cy, some of his 1,251 sup­port­ers lit­tered his page with well-wish­es: "Con­grat­u­la­tions Dr Row­ley, our Heav­en­ly Fa­ther has spo­ken and we give him all the PRAISE & GLO­RY and his will be done on elec­tion day. So keep up the good work and GOD BLESS!" Some used FB ap­pli­ca­tions like "flow­ers" to send con­grat­u­la­tions. PNM and UNC both have pages, though it's not cer­tain whether these are of­fi­cial or sim­ply man­aged by avid par­ty sup­port­ers.

UNC has 3,131 fans and their page fea­tures in­for­ma­tion on up­com­ing meet­ings, links to their web­page, etc. PNM's page has 1035 fans and is cu­ri­ous­ly list­ed as a lo­cal busi­ness. De­spite hav­ing few­er fans, the page fea­tured more pho­tos, videos and links. TEAM UNC-COP has 2,659 mem­bers, and says its page is "For mem­bers, sup­port­ers, and friends of UNC-COP-TOP-NJAC and CIV­IL SO­CI­ETY groups that will unite to de­feat the PNM in Elec­tions 2010." Con­gress of the Peo­ple has sev­er­al fan pages, in­clud­ing CON­GRESS OF THE PPL HEAD­ING 4 GOV­ERN­MENT. Whichev­er way the elec­tion swings, the Face­book plat­form will of­fer politi­cians a new av­enue to get the word out, and give vot­ers a chance to weigh in on is­sues.

Note: All quotes and fan sta­tis­tics were tak­en from Face­book as of the af­ter­noon of April 15.