Mexican politician Renato Tronco Gomez has turned to social media to reduce his workload – he’s currently running a competition on Facebook to find a lookalike willing to attend official engagements in his stead. He’s offering the winner a prize of 40,000 pesos (US $2,700), apart from the obvious media attention the position will bring. Four people have entered the contest so far.
Gomez, an independent deputy in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz, plans to thoroughly train the winner on speaking and acting like him, and taking care of his ‘many obligations’. The double will be on the payroll as his assistant, but some duties will remain off-limits, like official responsibilities and spending time with Gomez’s family.
“My double will not be able to attend sessions of parliament, because you vote with your fingerprint and I’m not going to cut off my finger to give it to my double,” Gomez joked. “There is going to be an agreement that he can’t sleep with my wife, nor live in my house, nor be father to my children.”
As it turns out, Gomez has been using proxies long before the idea for the contest came to him. “I used to send representatives to events I couldn’t attend and the idea of a double emerged two years ago as a joke,” he revealed. Critics are now calling his bizarre contest a ploy to seek attention, improve his political prospects, and eventually run for governor.
Gomez insists that his intentions are pure , and that he’s only doing it to serve his constituents better. “If singers and comedians do it, why not?” he argued. “I am not trying to fool anyone because my double will always identify himself as my double. I am not looking for the governorship. I believe the governorship is looking for me.” But there’s no denying that the contest has made Gomez famous throughout all of Mexico, whereas before he was only known in Veracruz.
The contest is open until the end of May through Gomez’s Facebook page, after which the winner will be declared. Gomez said that the deciding vote will obviously belong to his wife, because “she knows me inside and out.”
Photos: Facebook
via El Pais
