Kinanti Pinta Karana – Tifatul Sembiring, the minister of communications and information technology, has been acknowledged as Indonesia's most famous politician by a Web site that gauges an individual's popularity based on their social networking reach.

Famecount.com, which considers Facebook, Twitter and YouTube presence, put Tifatul in 24th place for his 207,264 Facebook fans and 237,495 Twitter followers.

He came in behind Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, at 19th, but ahead of Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who is ranked 35th. US President Barack Obama tops the list.

Tifatul's social networking popularity owes much to his proclivity for controversial statements. At a prayer meeting in November 2009 in Padang, West Sumatra, which was devastated by a tsunami two months earlier, he blamed the disaster on immoral TV shows. "Television broadcasts that destroy morals are plentiful in this country and therefore disasters will continue to occur," he said.

In October 2010, he raised the hackles of gay rights activists with a series of homophobic tweets in which he blamed "perverted sex acts" for the spread of HIV. In one tweet, he quoted a passage from the Koran that told of Allah "smiting [homosexuals] with rocks from a burning land."

The minister also courted international ridicule following an incident that would later be known as "Handshake-Gate." It began with a statement he wrote on Twitter, days before a state visit by Obama to Indonesia, that he would never shake hands or touch a woman to whom he was not related.

However, during the state reception for Obama and his wife, Michelle, Tifatul was seen leaning forward eagerly to accept the US first lady's handshake and bowing deferentially, in scenes that were parodied on the US late-night show The Colbert Report and covered by online news portal The Huffington Post.