Political economy of SBY's SMS PR strategy

I was so naïve in praising president Abdurrahman Wahid when he announced publicly his email address in 2000. I wrote in an article published by Bisnis Indonesia that it could be good start in fighting over-bureaucracy in our communication to high-level government officers. No one knows whether Gus Dur ever open his email though.

So I decided not to repeat that when president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono let public know his mobile phone number of 62-811-109949. All of a sudden, everybody send short message (SMS) to the number hoping the president will address issues they raised.

Off-course it is a good public relations strategy. Even when the number was crashed due to thousands of incoming messages, the president’s spoke person Andi Malarangeng blamed on limited capacity of the technology. But when reporters asked Andi on SBY’s reaction on the crashing cellular, this former political analyst said SBY was simply smiling.

What’s funny Mr President? This is not a joke, isn’t it?

Knowing such PR strategy could be a backfire, SBY then asked for apology. Urban Poor Consortium, upset for failing to send SBY their message, decided to give new SIM card to the president.

But that’s not going to help. Sudi Silalahi, cabinet secretary, went further with enlarge capacity with a new server and five different numbers. This is not technology problem, right?

As commented by parliament member, it’s almost impossible to SBY to read all the messages despite his good intention.

“So I urge the president to give the job to open those messages to minister of state secretary and then report them to SBY,” the honorary parliament member said.

Well, just imagine, millions of messages per day.

Oh, don’t be so skeptical! Off course the new server will able to receive millions of SMS. And the minister will surely be able to read those SMS and report them to the president. But don’t we have too many reports already without decent respond? All of us know what problems are. What we need is solution!

By the way, apart from debate of its effectiveness, it should be better if SBY ask telecommunication providers to donate all the money they raised from people’s SBS to him, say to the eradication of acute malnutrition in some areas in the country.

Let’s count. We have more than 20 million cellular customers. If all of them send messages to SBY, with average cost of Rp300 per message, providers could get Rp6 billion per day. Do it in 300 days, they could get Rp1.8 trillion. Well, Mr President. Ask telecommunication providers to donate big slice of it to support families with severe malnutrition. How about problems raised by folks who send SMS? Well, just give them promise as usual!

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