Maman Poulet | Clucking away crookedly through media, politics and life

Fine Gael, Brazil and Ravi Singh

January 4th, 2011 · Elections, General Election 2011, Irish Politics, Social Media

As we know from the last time Fine Gael launched a website things are never as they seem and techies and website developers discovered that Fine Gael had a little help for their design from a freelancer who used BBC code in the design.

It is no different with the site launched today according to a visiting chicken who showed me that this page has a line of cut and paste code in Portuguese .

< h3 class="succesHeading">Muito obrigado! Com você, o Brasil pode mais!< /h3 >

Muito obrigado! Com voce Brasil pode mais!

which roughly translates as Many thanks, Let’s build a Better Brazil. In fact if you search for the portuguese phrase in Google.ie – Fine Gael are ranked first.

This phrase is linked with the Brazilian Social Democratic Party – Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira, PSDB. (The party have observer status at the Christian Democrat Organization of America and Centrist Democrat International which would make sense from the Fine Gael point of view) The party members are known as Tuscanos and the phrase was satirised by (opponent) President Lula during the 2010 election campaign.

This all leads us to Ravi Singh who you will remember was in Dublin in December offering advice to Fine Gael. Hence why we have a line of portuguese in the website.

Ravi worked for the PSDB in the Brazilian elections last year and reviews of his efforts have been mixed – the party didn’t win. Given that the Brazilian campaign is part of Ravi’s recent portfolio and it is involved in some way in the Fine Gael website design it is interesting to take a look reviews of his work.

Eric Ehrmann writes in the Huffington Post about Singh’s work on the campaign.

Social Democrats hoped that Singh’s use of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube would also be difference makers in Brazil and give Serra new credibility with the electorate. But Colombia’s political culture doesn’t skew with Brazil, and Singh’s methods are steeped in American retail politics where fundraising is job #1, K Street is pay street, and voting is something people do if they’re bussed to the polls or if it isn’t raining outside, one reason good Republicans pray for rain on election day. Ironically, Singh, who grew up in Chicago, got his start in US presidential politics as an adviser in the 2000 presidential campaign of George Bush, managed by Karl Rove.

Brazil’s democracy, meanwhile, features mandatory voting, a sixty day campaign period, and strict regulation of advertising and tactics. Since an electoral college is not part of the political landscape, presidential elections are decided by popular vote. The social media tactics that generated millions per day for Barack Obama hit the wall in Brazil, where tough laws limit campaign contributions and the game of retail politics is still won by candidates who press the flesh at the Ford plant in Bahia, not on Facebook.

Ehrmann continues sourcing reviews of Singh’s methods from Brazilian media outlets.

According to the influential Folha de Sao Paulo, Singh was viewed by some campaign insiders as a truculent personality parachuting into a society where harmony and team play are important values. His contract was not renewed.Others, according to Brazilian media, considered him a spam artist.

What all this means for Fine Gael’s campaign is still to be seen of course. The Irish election system is different from the USA and from Brazil. But very shortly some tech will be cleaning the new Fine Gael website of any portuguese code because that’s what they had to do the last time. No doubt when the story of the Irish General Election is told we’ll find out about all the outside help that the parties had and how much it cost. (Singh made about $1 million in Brazil). Those of you fluent in portuguese may find out more about his tactics and campaign and let us know! In fact the webbies may well find the original website!

I’m looking forward to the second phase of this where Enda will no doubt have brushed his hair and looks into the camera and reveals what his party’s policies are and brings back the website with the information voters actually need! Maybe he’ll be doing the samba?

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General Election 2011 – Are you blogging it?

January 4th, 2011 · Blogging, Elections, General Election 2011, Irish Politics

I am putting together a list of blogs for General Election 2011 – so if you are a party member who blogs, a candidate or an interested other who will be writing on the election or the politics leading up to it , please leave a comment below and I will publish and update the list as we go along.

I can see already there are new (to me) people blogging on the election which is a great development. I will do round up posts before and through the campaign.

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‘I helped pioneer election blogging’

January 4th, 2011 · Blogging, Elections, General Election 2011, Irish Politics

I did say that seemingly Web General Election had begun… This in from ‘Election blogging Pioneer’ Thomas Byrne TD (Meath East)

East Meath TD Thomas Byrne has today welcomed Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny’s tentative return to the national political stage after his recent protracted leave of absence

Commenting on Fine Gael’s new online gimmick, fronted by a new ‘virtual’ Enda Kenny, Deputy Byrne said: “I am glad to see that Enda Kenny is back on the scene, albeit in virtual format only. I look forward to seeing whether this latest Enda is an interactive model and whether he will be available for political debate on the real issues facing Ireland today.”

“There is nothing like an election to focus the mind. After over 35 years in the Dáil, Enda Kenny or his handlers have decided to ask voters for their views promising that their input will form part of FG’s policies. How this will work, however, is not clear.”

“I also see that one of the first questions posed by Fine Gael is “do you consent to receiving campaign messages by mobile phone”, I begin to wonder about the real purpose of the website. Anyone who signs up better prepare for a deluge of text messages from Enda.”

“The prospects for this latest online initiative from Fine Gael, following proudly as it does in the footsteps of such gimmicks as ‘Whack-a-Dodo’ and ‘The Contract’, are not good; but I’ll welcome any initiative that gets the message through to Fine Gael that governing this country is not about gimmicks and easy headlines, but hard work and tough choices.”

Deputy Byrne said that a considerable number of TDs were now interacting on a daily basis with constituents through Facebook. “At the 2007 election, I helped pioneer election blogging. Over the last year and more I have found Facebook an excellent way of interacting with constituents but it must be done in a genuine way.”

I await all the other election blogging pioneers to issue their statements on the matter.

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The Web General Election begins today

January 4th, 2011 · Elections, General Election 2011, Irish Politics

Seemingly…

Harry McGee reports in today’s Irish Times that the Fine Gael Website is going to be taken down and replaced with one page with a video message from Enda Kenny. (So this is what he has been doing over the holiers?)

The party will shut down its main website – containing hundreds of pages – and replace it with a website consisting of a single page containing a video message from party leader Enda Kenny and an invitation to voters to share their views on policy and the future of Ireland.

The party said it was “a genuine attempt to start to change the way politics in Ireland works”, using methods modelled on those of former British prime minister Tony Blair and of Barack Obama during his US presidential campaign.

Fine Gael was portraying the move as the first time that interactive technology had been used to such an extent in an Irish election, it said. The views of voters would be incorporated into the party’s policies.

Is this what the American campaign expert Ravi Singh advised on his recent visit to Dublin which you would have read about around these parts last month? We also found out some of the market research underway for the campaign.

One hopes the video message will be better than this one. And that there will be parodies within oh a day or so.  How long till someone claims Enda has gone viral?

Included in this exercise is the invitation to the public to send in their ideas and complaints – Haven’t we had this so many times before – Your Country Your Call and the Ideas Campaign being just two previous run outs.

Psst.  Enda Kenny is not Barack Obama. Our election system is not the same as America.  The website and the campaign are going to be very different.  Please can we stop comparing whatever is going to be produced to that used in US Election 2008?   Or else we will have to compare Enda to Obama and it might not be pretty.

Update

I found the video

Enda Kenny from Fine Gael on Vimeo.

Initial thoughts on the concept rather than the video – Fine Gael have no policy now and have to ask voters? So if they criticise other party’s policies or the lack of them they don’t have a leg to stand on. Leadership Leadership Leadership. I have said it before and no doubt I will say it again. The country needs leading and to see it has leaders.

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RTE to blame for the weather – FG Senator

January 1st, 2011 · Irish Politics, Social Media

Happy New Year all.  I didn’t think I’d be joining you this soon with a bit of a story but our politicians fail to disappoint on the silly stakes.

Senator Fidelma Healy-Eames was recently selected to contest the General Election for Fine Gael in Galway West.  Her twitter account is a stream of consciousness with little engagement.

Last week she was tweeting about the lack of water and difficulties that were facing her constituents.

However tonight she blamed RTE on the wrong kind of weather forecast and it’s impact on hoteliers in Conamara (her spelling!).

This despite the fact that it’s the Met Service who do the forecasting, and that the Garda Siochana and AA Roadwatch and the Governmental Interagency Emergency Committee were all telling people not to travel unless it was essential.

Christmas was not as usual this year for most and indeed so many lost water supplies after it and were staying at home to look out for burst pipes etc.   But let the facts not get in the way of a good story for the local papers and a chance for a Senator to slag off RTE.  (It’s a hobby horse of many Senators by the way – in fact if it were not for RTE either by way of fodder for questions or reasons to slag off they would have little to speak about on the Seanad order of business.)

Now of course the Senator has some coverage of what she has said – let’s hope those constituents without water and the many who could not leave their houses due to the ice for days will let her know what they think.

Update:

There’s more – it seems the Senator’s hypothesis regarding it being  RTE’s fault is based on her information that foreigners made it to the hotels and the Irish cancelled.  Ergo the Irish are stupid for not driving cautiously or failing to disregard the advice of the Gardai, NRA, and other safety agencies.

Miriam Lord referred to the Senator two weeks ago as Fidelma Really Screams a few weeks ago. Tonight on twitter the mention is being made of Ireland’s Palin.

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