A Facebook campaign to support the nomination of Mohamed ElBaradei as president of Egypt continues to grow. By Tuesday noon, the membership was over 92,000. Ten thousand joined the group only hours after Mona el-Shazaly’s talk show el-Ashera Masaan ("10 PM"), which hosted ElBaradei for around three hours.
The Facebook group "ElBaradei for President 2011" is the largest Egyptian political group on the social networking site. Its membership has even exceeded that of the Facebook group owned by the 6th April Youth movement which called for a general strike in 2008.
The ElBaradei campaign group is currently averaging 13 new members every minute. Several thousand members of the group have replaced their personal photos on their Facebook profiles with that of ElBaradei.
Many members of the pro-ElBaradei group have expressed their support for the former IAEA head through mass endorsement: posts on the group’s wall include messages stating that "the Copts of Egypt," "the engineering students of Zagazig," or "the Egyptian expatriate community in Saudi Arabia" support ElBaradei.
There are also long discussions on the group about the best way to work toward amending the constitution and opening the door to the nomination of independent candidates for the presidential election.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
