Information Travels Faster in the Modern Age

One of the most fascinating aspects of recent social upheavals has been the use of traditional and digital communication devices in organizing, documenting and reporting on civil strife. During the crisis in 2009 here in Madagascar, people used texts to report where and when gatherings would happen. They took photos of rioting, looting, and clashes with soldiers on their cell phones. And they wrote about all of this on their blogs and facebook groups. These same outlets have been utilized ever since to track the current government's progress and any opposition groups' events. This phenomenon has received a lot of attention in places like Kenya (check out this interesting crowd data software that is used for things like election monitoring and emergency services)

Here in Madagascar, I have noticed a great upswing in local internet-based coverage of political and social events (thanks also to my upgraded internet access). Now if I type in Madagascar to google news (and add a word like "Rajoelina" to filter out the movie references) I can find lots of French and Malagasy language articles. I've added a few of the more-frequently-updated sites to the sidebar (note: some of these are quite biased; as a matter of fact, pretty much all journamlism and websites are biased here, so please take any news gathered from any of these sites with a large grain of salt!) - here are the translated pages (from French): Madagascar Tribune, Express de Madagascar, Tananews

With this type of upsurge in mass communications and overall political awareness, it is shocking to me that some politicians think they can still get by with the old tried-and-true methods of election tampering and other tricks. For example, here is a story that may have gone completely unnoticed a few years ago, and may have even worked in previous elections. "copies of a single ballot for use in the next referendum were distributed to the population of Moramanga. These ballots have already been checked in front of "Yes", and could be used to buy votes. Voters who received one of these ballots would have to slip it into the ballot box on election day and return the blank ballot as proof of their participation. A sum of money would be paid in exchange."

Seriously?

One other link, completely unrelated to the above but very related to my work with organic certification of our koloharena's rice. this is from the organic certifying agent we use - ECOCERT talks about their certification program: ""Sometimes we have producers who are calling us and asking: How much does the certification (cost)? And when you can send the certificate? But it does not happen like that, a certificate can(not) be issued without a field monitoring and sample analysis."

That is an understatement.... let's just say the process is anything but simple. But it is true, most Malagasy seem to think if you pay a fee than you should receive certification, even if your product is full of chemicals. But the length of the process and the challenges of the monitoring and anlaysis make for a nice sense of accomplishment when you finally receive certification!