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Web Brings People Closer to Leaders

DUBAI - Eight years ago, His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai spoke to the public to stimulate the interest of the Emirati community to use the Internet.

But now, according to Shaikh Mohammed, “the usage of the Internet across the UAE has come to be taken for granted; in fact, the Web has been adopted so extensively in both the public and private sectors that e-communications are the norm rather than the exception.”

There is a growing trend of tech-savvy world leaders and politicians adopting the World Wide Web to connect with the public. The President of United States, Barack Obama was the most followed man on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook when he was campaigning for Presidency. According the recent count, he has 6,221,391 supporters on his page in Facebook.

British national, John Davies said that newspapers, television and radio give an edited version of what the leaders want to tell the masses. “The leaders can give direct answers to public query. I think Shaikh Mohammed launched this initiative at a perfect time, especially because he was under all this pressure from the international media.”

Shaikh Mohammed said on his website, “We see that a large segment of our society, especially young people, believe that the Internet is the most important source of information, education and entertainment.”

After giving answers to the media’s queries, he will be giving answers to questions posed by Emirati nationals in subsequent posts on his website.

· —dhanusha@khaleejtimes.com

• UAE