There are a number of questions being asked as to why Indian über-geek and guru extrodinaire N.R. Narayana Murthy decided to withdraw from being the personal advisor to our President on IT matters due to ‘personal reasons’. All is not lost. Given our close ties with Iran the President is well advised to get Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s help in developing IT and e-government in Sri Lanka.
President Ahmadinejad’s qualifications for this far exceeds Murthy’s.
Firstly, he is a fellow President, democratically elected in a free and fair election, with shared interests in strengthening human rights and democracy. Murthy at best can buy command and control over a botnet. Secondly, and more importantly, President Ahmadinejad blogs, which is frankly very cool. He started to do so way back in 2006 (and you thought Obama was the trendsetter?) and though he’s stopped now, it’s clear that Murthy’s knowledge of the IT industry is equal to his ignorance of new media.
- A Presidential Blog
The BBC broke the news of President Ahmadinejad’s blog thus:
Mr Ahmadinejad’s first entry on his blog, which is available in Persian, Arabic, English and French and includes an RSS feed to get future new entries to readers… Describing himself as a “distinguished student”, the president tells how he excelled at school, coming 132nd out of more than 400,000 students to take a university entrance test – despite suffering from a nose bleed at the time.
A blog entry on 18th November 2007 is worth reproducing in full (but is by no means the best on the site),
Since my last post on the blog, a few months have passed. But this doesn’t mean that I have not been keeping my promise of spending fifteen minutes per week on it. As a matter of fact, I have spent more than the allocated time on the blog. The magnitude of the reception and acclamation from the viewers was beyond expectations. So I had to decide how to spend the limited time that I have allocated for the blog; should I write new notes or respect those viewers who kindly and generously have shared their thoughts and opinions with me and sent messages and read their numerous received messages.
As you know, the purpose of running this blog is to have a direct and mutual contact and communication with the viewers and even though I have received many messages from the viewers to update the blog and write new notes, I preferred to write less and spend more time on reading the viewers’ messages – and not let this communication tool become just a one-way medium.
I personally have read those messages that are considered to be short. I even have read those messages that have started with a sentence like “I know that the president is not going to read this message, but….”
Also some of my trusted students have shortened the long messages for me and have prepared a statistical report regarding all of the messages which I have read and studied those too. God willing, a portion of the overall analysis of the messages and its interesting results will be posted on the blog in the future.
I am apologetic to those who have been waiting for my new posts, but fortunately overall, the analysis of the messages has got to a point that I can start writing here again.
I would like to use this opportunity and ask those of you who intend to send me messages through blog, to make it as brief as you can. Thank you.
Now there’s rare talent.
ICTA must act immediately to ensure that our own President is made fully aware of his ally’s significant strengths and along with Iran’s hugely progressive mainstream media and web media strategies, ensure that we Sri Lankan’s also enjoy the benefits of good IT policies and practices.
ICT for Peacebuilding (#ICT4Peace) 
King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia used to blog too. Hand-written and then placed on the net, I recall. A Buddhist King. Most appropriate.
Dunno if he’s still alive, but that is not the most important qualification for a Presidential Adviser.