MANILA, Philippines—They may be older than most Facebook users, but the perceived frontrunners in the presidential race—Benigno Aquino III, Manuel Villar, Gilbert Teodoro, Joseph Estrada and Richard Gordon—have joined the social networking bandwagon on the Internet with the single objective of wooing voters in the run-up to the May 10 elections.
In the digital race to get as much “fans” and “supporters,” Aquino, standard-bearer of the Liberal Party, seems to be ahead of the pack.
So far on their official Facebook pages, Aquino has 210,988 supporters; Villar (Nationalista Party) has 158,016 fans plus 2,756 in two other Facebook public profiles; Gilbert Teodoro (Lakas-Kampi-CMD) managed to have 26,907 fans and 3,100 supporters; while Richard Gordon (Bagumbayan) and Joseph Estrada (Partido ng Masang Pilipino) have 2,894 and 4,050 supporters, respectively.
The former president has another Facebook account with 421 fans.
Sen. Jamby Madrigal (independent) has 201 fans, while JC Delos Reyes' two youth group accounts have 861 and 71 members, respectively.
The Inquirer made the count as of 3 p.m. Saturday, but the figures continued to go up at presstime.
Aquino breached the 200,000 mark when, in the first hours of the New Year, one Abygail Salcedo clicked the “supporter” button in Aquino's site.
Salcedo responded to the campaign waged by the the volunteer-run “Noynoy (Aquino) New Media Team,” which launched a 20-day online drive in the run-up to 2010 to parallel the wide lead Aquino has been enjoying in recent polls.
The Aquino camp welcomed this development by issuing a statement saying that “201,000th fan marks beginning of 2010 for Noynoy's online supporters.”
It said that the continuing surge showed “unwavering momentum” for Aquino's presidential bid.
Building on a base of 116,000 supporters, the Noynoy New MediaTeam went into overdrive during the holidays.
Supporters from around the world rallied friends and family by initiating impromptu sign-up brigades, personally inviting friends, forwarding e-mails and painting their profile pictures yellow.
Some supporters also donated a few dollars a day to widen their reach and advertise their support on the social network.
“The breaching of our goal cements what the polls have been consistently saying for the last four months,” said New Media Bureau Head Enteng Romano III.
“The momentum is unbroken, Filipinos are steadfastly heeding our call for genuine change in this country,” he said. “This only proves that if we work together and put our hearts into it, we can accomplish great things.”
The fan page amassed more than 80,000 new supporters in 20 days. After midnight, the 201,000 target was easily surpassed, further widening the gap between Aquino and his rivals by more than 50,000 supporters.
It remains to be seen, however, if online fans and supporters would translate into votes come election day.
All five candidates uploaded photoshop-edited pictures, but only Villar was smiling; the rest were in a pensive or serious mood.
Sporting the slogan “Gordon, bayani (hero),” the photo of the senator shows him hugging a baby while holding a megaphone. The picture was taken while he was mobilizing volunteers and rescuers during the Mt. Pinatubo calamity in the 1990s.
Gordon’s campaign theme: "Leadership must be earned, not bought nor inherited."
Donning his orange campaign color, Villar's profile shot has a green backdrop, a subtle way of reminding voters that his running mate is Sen. Loren Legarda, who has championed environmental causes for over two decades.
His campaign theme: "Galing sa mahirap, para sa mahirap."
Teodoro's slogan, emblazoned at the bottom of his main picture, is: “Galing Talino: para sa mabilis na pagbabago.”
Estrada is shown wearing a Barong Tagalog in his profile picture.
His slogan is: "Walang tutulong sa Pilipino kung hindi ang kapwa Pilipino."
The political operators and strategists of all the presidential candidates might have been inspired by United States President Barack Obama, who raised half a billion dollars online in his 21-month campaign for the presidency.
The digital campaign—the use of e-mail, text messages and social networking sites like Facebook and Multiply—was a big factor in Obama's victory in 2008.
Facebook defines itself as a social utility that connects people with friends and others, and in election time, others include voters.
All five presidential candidates intentionally put “currently running for president” or “presidential standard-bearer” in their profile information.
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