Uzbekistan: But is That Really the Uzbek Prime Minister on Facebook?
The other day I wrote about Uzbekistan's Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev -- if it really is him -- collecting friends on Facebook.
And the debate continues as to whether it really is him.
A EurasiaNet reader Sarah Kendzior writes on Twitter: "Mirziyoyev is not on Facebook. I wrote about this months ago, and so did others (in Uzbek)."
In July, Kendzior noted that the prime minister's Facebook wall posts were "unironic" but wondered if he was really "...a Leon Panetta fan (?!)".
The article in Uzbek in Vatandosh she references denies that the Facebook page is really his, and cites the press service of the Cabinet of Ministers. Vatandosh also mentioned that some of the photos on the account seem to have been taken from the Internet.
But Uzbek colleagues have pointed out to me that some of the photos do seem to be original and do not seem to be from government sites, and they think the site could well be his. As they point out, why hasn't Mirziyoyev had this site closed down, if it isn't really his? In July, when the article was written, there were 400 friends; today, four months later, there are 1,825 friends so it's getting a lot of attention for Uzbekistan.
Facebook doesn't have a system for public figures to notate their personal account as "validated" as Twitter does, but it does enable public figures to make public profiles to which members can subscribe. Mirziyoyev's account is of the personal type.
It can sometimes be difficult to address identity-theft on Facebook and get an account removed, but if you're the prime minister of Uzbekistan, it shouldn't be that big a problem. Perhaps he is allowing a friend or staff person to run it for him?
So it seems as if there isn't proof that this is Mirziyoyev's page -- but there isn't proof that it isn't, either.
Why would the prime minister make a page now? Perhaps, in a bid to become President Islam Karimov's successor, he wants to improve his image and even show himself to be something of a "liker" of Western philosophies at a time when there is an emerging partnership with the United States and the European Union.
Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev started a blog to boost his image as a liberal -- such as it is. Increasingly, the region's leaders are getting on social media to make their case. Roza Otunbayeva, for example, has a verified Twitter account with 7,004 followers although she doesn't seem to tweet that often.
This handy list of verified world leaders on Twitter also shows Prime Minister Recep Erdogan.
Using Google's new image search service, you can plug in a photo and see if it appears anywhere else on the Internet. Some of the prime minister's photos appeared first on other sites, like what one wall wit called the "gangster shashlyk" photo of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which can be found on the Kremlin's website; others, like the one of him walking up steps, don't seem to appear anywhere else.
So I await new evidence on either side of the argument.
In case you were wondering what the translation into English of Mirziyoyev's favorite quote, it's: "To gain strength from the people, to serve the people." (Hat tip to David Trilling).
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