Kenyan Statehouse ridiculed after Facebook flags Museveni’s congratulatory message

The Kenyan Statehouse social media team charged with posting official engagements of President Uhuru Kenyatta were on Sunday left with an egg on the face after Facebook flagged off a congratulatory message to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.

The Statehouse media team—led by Kanze Dena-Mararo—posted a congratulatory message to President Museveni praising after the Uganda Electoral Commission announced the results on Saturday. In the message were flowery and reassuring words saying the election was a ‘testimony on how Ugandans’ had overwhelming confidence in Museveni-led administration. Uhuru administration reassured Museveni of its support in the new term in the hope of more bilateral engagements.

However, hell broke loose later after Facebook flagged the post as fake news. The Statehouse pulled down the tweet sending Kenyans into a serious debate. Many of them relished the step taken by Facebook to do a fact-check on their government mouthpiece.

But an expansive statement explaining what may have transpired was later issued by PesaCheck, a Kenyan-based fact check website. According to PesaCheck, the flagging of the tweet was not in any way linked with legitimacy of Museveni’s win but it was attributable to the choice of picture Statehouse team used.

It stated that Facebook had teamed with other fact-check entities to always do automated fact-checking on posts that are uploaded on the platform. In this case, the picture that accompanied the tweet had been flagged by PesaCheck as fake, when it debunked a claim that Museveni had reshuffled cabinet in 2019.

PesaCheck said in their explanation: ‘‘An image posted on Facebook by State House Kenya was erroneously marked as false, and a PesaCheck fact-check published on December 4, 2019 was attached.

The error appears to have originated from the automation system, which looks for similar content that has been fact-checked.’’

‘‘In this case, the fact-check that was published in December 2019, which covered a false claim about President Museveni reshuffling his cabinet, had the same photo that was shared by State House. That photo had been marked as false, in the old system — because it was part of a post with misinformation,’’ it added.

The UCC declared Museveni the winner of the January 14 presidential election with slightly over 5 million votes. His main challenger Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine, who finished second with 3.4 million votes, has disowned the results claiming massive rigging of votes.

On Sunday afternoon, Wine took to Twitter to protest house arrest which he said and restricted his movements and subjected his family to starvation.

Museveni enters his sixth consecutive term as the leader of the East African nation.