Cyberspace – new battleground for political parties

Major parties enhance outreach; PPP remains aloof.


Mohammed Rizwan April 15, 2012

LAHORE:


Political parties are all set to contest the next parliamentary election on the airwaves and in cyberspace.


Parties such as Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) are using social media and web portals to attract urban and young voters between the ages of 18 and 25 who form more than 60 per cent of Pakistan’s population and are likely to influence the outcome of the future election.

Though the date for next election has not been announced yet, cyber warfare among major contenders has already begun.

More than 30 volunteers work round-the-clock to keep the PTI afloat on the waves. The official website gets more than 100,000 hits daily from across the country and abroad. Its ongoing membership campaign conducted through SMS, web and manual forms boasts of more than a million members to date. PTI’s official Facebook page ‘Imran the next prime minister’ has 500,000 members while PTI’s official party page has 400,000 members so far.

“The traffic on our portals is so huge that sometimes even we can’t keep pace with it,” said Imran Ghazali, head of PTI’s social media.

PTI’s archrival Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) also launched an attractive website with a lot of ‘razzmatazz’ to woo young voters. The Sharif brothers are shown in glittering backgrounds addressing public meetings.

“Currently, the website gets around 1,200 hits per day,” said Asim Khan, Media Coordinator for the PML-N. “To tell you the truth, we were not as receptive to the idea of cyber warfare but the PTI has compelled other parties to go online,” Khan said. “To get into the world of blogs, we are working on a new website pmln.tv,” he added.

Even Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) is maintaining an impressive web portal that is visited by 3,000 people from across the country and abroad.

The JI is also running a Facebook page that has 40,000 users while a separate Facebook page for Amir Munawar Hasan has 23,000 users.

“We launched this website in 1996 but we revamped it three years ago,” said Shamsuddin, the party’s IT head. “I strongly believe that cyber space and social media will have a huge impact on the next general elections,” Shamsuddin said.

For the PPP, it seems web and social media are far less important. The PPP runs an official website which is not interactive and the party has no official presence on Facebook either.

Its official website “used to get 10,000 hits when the party was in opposition,” according to website manager Amjad Akhlaq. ­

Prominent blogger and columnist Raza Rumi feels that though social media and the web have taken the lead in communication, in a society like Pakistan, it will not be able to ‘make or break’ anything. “The use of the web and social media has increased tremendously but it is unlikely to affect voting patterns in the next elections,” Rumi said.

Blogger, columnist and anchor Javed Chaudhry disagrees. “The line dividing rural and urban people is fading fast as villages too now have access to the internet and TV. I think the impact of social media and the web will play a pivotal role in the next elections,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 15th, 2012.

COMMENTS (22)

mirza baig | 11 years ago | Reply

This is the example of a mindset who really do not want any party who donot base from punjab to be discussed even though MQM has set an excellent example to bring those individuals who have talent and wants to sacrifice for the batterment of our nation Dr. Farooq Sattar Mayor Mustafa Kamal are few pearls but we can find thousands of MQM worker who are motivated to do somthing for pakistan but 65% populated province are extremely power ful they do not wants that to happen they know the fact if they allow MQM to work they there will be no room for them to remain in power they understand PTI will not have that potential to dent them but previously test political party MQM have all tools so they dont even wants to discuss any thing in refrence to MQM

S Imran Ahmed | 11 years ago | Reply

There is no match with MQM through out all the political parties of Pakistan. MQM is the only political party of 98% hapless people of our dear country. Pakistan. MQM thousands time better than PTI all political parties of Pakistan & Leaders…

VIEW MORE COMMENTS
Replying to X

Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.

For more information, please see our Comments FAQ