“I don’t think anybody out there in the media, UN, human rights organisations, has any moral right whatsoever to level any accusations against me or against Rwanda”
This is what Paul Kagame, long time Rwanda president, said during a recent interview with the Financial Times and it is what reportedly sparked the first ever tweet-fight between and a head of state and a journalist.
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Is this an example of rhetoric 2.0 that we’ll be witnessing in the future? Or will this serve as further deterrent to all public figures out there to — despite bowing to social media pressures to ”be public” and engaged — should “stay put” and not engage in confrontations?
Will we — with the U.S. 2012 presidential elections — witness unprecedented volumes of conversations and tweet-fights? I am pretty sure that the future promises to be very fun on socio-planet. What’s the craziest Twitter sparing you can imagine, featuring political figures among themselves, with journalists, supporters or constituents?
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Paul Kagame, aka @PaulKagame, FT interview had just been published the day before the tweet-fight occurred. Ian Birrell aka @IanBirrell — ex-deputy editor at The Independent and speechwriter for David Cameron, now
columnist and co-founder of Africa Express — apparently did not like Paul Kagame’s remark as he proceeded to include in his tweet sharing the article the descriptive: “despotic & deluted“.
To which Paul Kagame, or whomever is managing his account, quickly replied:
Not content with a measly 140 characters reply he proceeds to fire 5 more tweets:
Ian Birrell was most likely not at his first not so social tweet at a prominent public figure and, probably surprised at the rather lengthy and public reply from a head of state, seems to take advantage of the opportunity and make the windfall last:
Paul Kagame starts by “pouting”
And proceeds to answer Ian’s request by another question:
Ian Birrell reminds him of the, apparently, not so shiny Rwandan press freedom record
To which Paul Kagame deflects the chat to Ian’s own government handling of press freedom
Than putting his tweets where his mouth is, to exactly what he was engaging in at that moment:
Than goes on to continue exposing his rationale
While Ian Birrell never responded — at least publicly — beyond that last “underlines the point” tweet. Paul Kagame ended by seemingly softening his talk and clarifying his thoughts, maybe not wanting to further poison the relationship with the journalist.
The next tweet in Paul Kagame’s timeline only occurred the next day, in response to a certain Paul Hird aka paulhird9 who apparently “handles multi-million and multi billion dollar transactions worldwide” and “deals mainly with Governments and Royalty” at “Zero interest rates” (!)…
What’s the craziest Twitter sparing you can imagine featuring political figures among themselves, with journalists, supporters or constituents?
Ian Birrell also wrote about what he called “My twitterspat with Paul Kagame‘, his take on it has a more a political slant to it and if you are so inclined, you can read it here: “Returning home from a Saturday afternoon walk with the dog, I did what has become almost a reflex action and checked Twitter. Bizarrely, there was the president of Rwanda having a go at me over disparaging comments I had made about an interview he gave that morning…”
