KABUL(SW):The Arg (Presidential Palace)’s official facebook page has become a place where besides his followers, many visitors that are not happy with the government’s performance leave comments and curse the President.
One can simply calculate how often the President receives swear words in a week.
According to Salam Watandar, which has monitored the page, since 29 September to 5 October, the President has been cursed 1500 times. It is more likely that higher number of people curse at the President on the Arg’s official page as Salam Watandar observed many offensive comments on the page often get removed by the admin of the page.
Apart from the Arg (Presidential Palace)’s official facebook page, President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani also has a personnel page that too is serving as a platform where people both praise and curse him.
Some people criticize the President without using offensive words but some use rather aggressive and rude words. More than 700 users have criticized the President without using swear words while 260 others have expressed their views about the President’s performances.
Arg has posted 33 posts in a week, which have received 3098 comments. Only 101 users have supported the President. The posts came at a time when there was intense fighting going on between the security forces and the Taliban in Kunduz. Many blamed him for failing to save the city from falling to the rebels. Members of his security team, Mohammad Hanif Atmar, National Security Advisor, Rahmatullah Nabil, Director of the NDS, Noor-ul-Haq Olumi, Interior Minister and Mohammad Masoum Stanekzai, Acting Defense Minister and Omar Safi, former Kunduz governor were also on the receiving end.
Chief Executive Office
Abdullah Abdullah, the Chief Executive Officer, has also received some rude and offensive comments on his personal and official page. The reason why the CEO has received less criticism than the President can be because the Arg page has over 700, 000 followers while the CEO’s page has around 150 k followers.
The Chief Executive Office placed 18 posts this week on its facebook page, which have received 131 comments out of which 60 users have cursed the Chief Executive Officer and 40 others have criticized him.
The survey shows that most of social media users, especially facebook users are not satisfied with the government’s performances.
Salam Watandar wished to obtain the views of the Arg and the CEO on this subject but to no avail. Sayed Zafar Hashemi, Deputy Spokesman for the President and Asef Ashna, Deputy Spokesman for the CEO were approached for it but both avoided commenting.
Rohullah Rezwan, a psychiatrist, said that the reactions on social media indicated how many people were dissatisfied with the government, which triggered their rage. He said that the citizens hold the government responsible for the worsening situation in the country rather than finding a solution to the problem. He asserted that the current government and the former regimes in Afghanistan have not been accountable to the people and have not taken people’s criticism seriously.
Bari Salam, a social activist, said that Afghanistan has entered another phase since the establishment of Government of National Unity. He said that GNU inherited many problems from the former government. He added some troubles surfaced due to the differences between the Presidential Palace and Chief Executive Office.
He said that the leaders needs cooperation among themselves to implement its plans, which would be time consuming. Praising the impact of social media on government’s performance, he said that the social media plays a great role as a source of know people’s reaction about the government’s performance.
ENDS
