Esfandiar Adena is the BBC Media Action Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) for spring 2013. He is currently working on a research project at RISJ in Oxford on social media and governance in Tajikistan. The closer we get to the November presidential elections in Tajikistan, the more hostile the polemic is becoming between government and opposition. And it's the country's social media platforms that have become the battlefield for the most savage skirmishes. Slander and name-calling between heavy-handed critics of President Emomali Rahmon and furious pro-government cyber activists is common on the Tajik pages of Facebook. But the online clashes have intensified recently in reaction to a video leaked to K+ TV, a popular TV channel in Central Asia. Wedding scandal Filmed during the wedding party of President Rahmon's son in 2009, the video shows the president apparently drunk, singing and dancing.

The Rahmon wedding video on YouTube.

At one point in the video, after the head of the state-owned radio and TV committee whispers something in his ear, the president looks at his watch and motions for guests to leave only to suddenly stop them moments later, calling them back to their seats because they haven't yet been "served the main dish". "He cannot manage his own son's wedding party [so] how can he manage a country such as Tajikistan?" was the mocking response of the President's long-standing critic, Dadajan Atavollayev. A journalist and leader of the Tajik opposition movement Vatandar, Atavollayev has lived in exile in Moscow for the 20 years Rahmon has been in power. Atavollayev also used the video's broadcast as a chance to criticise Rahmon for widespread corruption, accusing him of turning Tajikistan into a family enterprise, not to mention violating a law - initiated and signed by the president himself in 2007 - which regulates spending on weddings and other ceremonies.

Opposition leader Dadajan Atavollayev criticising President Rahmon on K+ TV.

So widespread was the social media response to the video that, as one government official told me, people at "all levels of the government are discussing the video and its consequences". The website of TV channel K+ TV and YouTube were blocked in Tajikistan for two weeks in May and although it cannot be independently verified, the government has reportedly detained a number of people for leaking the video, including state TV journalists. "No more war!" Pro-government voices meanwhile have taken up the fight online, attacking Atavollayev with slander and threats and publishing poems and caricatures mocking him as a "failed opponent of Rahmon who could never win the hearts of people" and "who is envious about the president's popularity and public appeal".

A caricature of Atavollayev on Facebook.