Antanas Mockus, presidential candidate for Colombia’s Green Party, has more than four times as many fans on social networking site Facebook as any of his fellow candidates, making him the thirteenth most-followed politician on the whole website.
According to El Espectador, the candidate is fast reaching a total of 400,000 Facebook fans – reportedly gaining one fan every six seconds – while his closest challenger, Gustavo Petro, has just 93,000.
Third in the race is Partido de la U candidate, Juan Manuel Santos, who can claim almost 58,000 fans, and coming last of the six main presidential candidates is the Conservative Party’s Noemi Sanin, with around 7,000 followers.
Fans of the Green Party candidate, referred to by some as “Colombia’s Obama,” are campaigning to raise his number of followers from 381,636 at the time of writing on Wednesday afternoon, to 400,000 by midnight, with a scheme in which every one of his fans convinces ten new people to add Mockus on Facebook.
“Friends, today more than ever the Green Party, to carry Antanas to presidency, needs to convince ten people around us (on the bus, in the Transmilenio, in the metro, at university, in our family) to vote for Mockus,” says the candidate’s page.
Mockus’ site has an average of 15 updates per minute by followers, who publish proposals for campaign posters, home videos, and topics they believe should be included in the Green Party program.
The Green Party candidate has been leading the social networking popularity game since the start of the month, as well as rising steadily in national opinion polls.
Antanas Mockus will be running for president in Colombia’s national elections on May 30.