What Is In An Email? Medvedev Addresses Federal Assembly, Writes His Speech Based On People’s Emails
I have recently blogged about the Internet prowess of Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev – I was talking about how he has a blog where he regularly posts messages, addressing the citizens of Russia on day-to-day issues. Well, last Friday Medvedev gave his annual speech to the Federal Assembly. And, according to Kremlin, his speech was based on emails sent by regular people from all over the country.
The Federal Assembly address is a speech that the President of Russia gives every year to talk about things that worked in the previous year and the things that did not. The interesting thing about this year’s address is that one month prior to giving his speech, Medvedev wrote an article for an influential online newspaper called Gazeta.ru in which he asked Russians to send emails to kremlin@gov.ru suggesting topics for him to discuss during his address. The call for emails was an interesting twist on the annual address. In any case, it definitely did not go unnoticed. Medvedev’s article in Gazeta.ru now has almost 2,600 online comments - some of them supportive, some curious, some downright incredulous of the whole thing. Unfortunately, Medvedev never disclosed which of the issues that he raised during his November 13th address came straight from people’s emails, but it was interesting to see Medvedev pushing for more public dialogue to take place.
I was thinking about Canada in this respect too, wondering if I would be willing to email Stephen Harper to give him ideas of things to talk about in his speeches. I think here in North America we are so used to politics being a public matter that if you fire your PM an email, it might be looked upon by your friends ands colleagues as being over enthusiastic and keen, and just not a very cool thing to do.
But, what about you? Would you send an email to the leader of your country if you had a chance? Do you think it would reach the destination and serve its purpose, or would it be a waste of your time?
