Lee Hsien Loong on Facebook!

 

From left to right: Nerd, poker face 1, Ang Long, enthusiastic resident, Returning Officer Extraordinaire, poker face 2, smiling Indian man

Singapore's prime minister, the strong and mighty Lee Hsien Loong, officially launched his Facebook page as well as Twitter account yesterday afternoon. As I am typing this post now, his Facebook page has attracted more than 28,000 likes. Let's see if he can match Nicole Seah's 105K fans.

Seeing the likes of his fellow ministers and even Malaysian PM Najib Razak using social networking sites as a desperate attempt to boost their popularity, PM Lee certainly believes that he is obliged to join in the fun. The burning question, however, is why now?

Staff  bootlickers of Mr Lee will help the small Lee-der maintain his page but he claimed that he will try to post as often as he can. So does that mean that he will not bother to engage with netizens but allow certain authorized people to delete unfavourable posts whenever they like?

No one expects the PM to be vain enough to reply every single post on his wall but one must wonder how is he going to keep those who made an effort to post (or bootlick him) satisfied. Remember that failed attempt by him to "engage youths" via PAP's official Facebook page during last year's election campaign?

Every time Mr Lee posts something, he will automatically get hundreds of comments at the rate of one per second. Only the most naive people (those who strongly welcome foreign talents) will choose to believe that their comment will be read and replied.

With this brand new Facebook page of Lee himself, it is just déjà vu Singapore version. The people who commented are either praising him for joining Facebook or complaining about life in a polite manner. Either way, the administrators of the page will probably be laughing at these typical comments behind the screen.

Najib Razak has been fairly successful on Facebook so far with many youths engaging with him on the web. However, a Bersih 3.0 rally still looks set to take place next Saturday after its predecessor, Bersih 2.0, claimed huge success and media coverage in July last year.

Lee Hsien Loong can continue updating his Facebook page but he needs to keep in mind that unless obvious issues on the ground like transportation and minimum wage can be resolved, he will not be able to transform the number of likes he has into votes.