PM Lee Hsien Loong has now more than a million “Likes” on his Facebook page, making him possibly the political leader with the highest ratio of social media followers to country population in the world.
He crossed the landmark 1 million figure on 17 February. By Friday last week (4 March 2016) afternoon he had 1,021,456 likes and counting. That means that he has 18 followers for every 100 persons living in Singapore. By country of origin as registered on Facebook, 52.7 % (or 537,000) of his likes are from people in Singapore, 16.0 %from Malaysia and 6.6 % from Vietnam, according to statistics from Social Bakers website obtained my research assistant Tng Ying Hui.
Among political leaders,United States President Barack Obama has 47.2 million fans, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi 32.5 million, Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan 8.18 million, Indonesia President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo 6.08 million, Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III 4.25 million, Malaysian Prime Minister NajibRazak 2.98 million, Russian President Vladimir Putin 2.01 million. The ratios of their Facebook likes to their country populations is less than PM Lee’s.
Screenshot of today’s page
Mr Lee is also one of the most popular Singaporeans in any field. Actors Aaron Aziz tops 2.76 million likes (mostly from Indonesia) and followed by Jeanette Aw with 1,27 million(mostly from Malaysia) and Fann Wong with just under a million. Megachurch New Creation pastor Joseph Prince has 3.20 million likes, but only 1.6 % or 48,000 are in Singapore and the highest proportion from the U.S. (33.1 %).
PM Lee’s first Facebook post was on 20 April 2012, though some posts uploaded later are marked with earlier dates, such as a post on when he first became an army platoon commander in July 1973. So far he has posted more than 1,780 times, with 50 to 100 posts each month. He has shared 1325 photos, 222 videos and 145 status updates.
On his Facebook page, he explains: “My staff from the Prime Minister’s Office help me maintain this page. I sign off my own posts with the initials “LHL”. Mr Lee crossed the 1 million mark on 16 Feb when he was in US. There he met President Obama and leaders in the technology field, such asFacebook founder Mark Zuckerberg who put up photos of their meeting on his social media. ,.
Among the most popular politicians on Facebook are Singapore Minister for Foreign Affairs K. Shanmugam (93,000), Minister for Social and Family Development Tan Chuan-Jin (72,000 likes), Singapore Democratic Party leader Chee Soon Juan (40,000 likes), Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean (39,000) and Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam (34,000).
Crossing one million (data from Social Bakers)
‘Likes’ by country of origin (data from Social Bakers)
Tan Tarn How Too 