Obama 2017: Petition Calls for Barack Obama to Run as French President

If the upcoming French election wasn’t tense enough, a petition is calling to add yet another candidate into the mix: former U.S. President Barack Obama.

The Obama 17 campaign, which was launched earlier this week, is attempting to collect 1 million signatures by March 15 in order to persuade Obama to stand in the May election.

“Barack Obama has the best resume in the world for the job,” the site explains. “Because at a time when France is about to vote massively for the extreme right, we can still give a lesson of democracy to the planet by electing a French President, a foreigner.”

According to NBC, posters calling for Obama 2017 have been plastered around Paris and the petition has received about 27,000 signatures so far. One of the site’s founders told NBC that he thought up the idea for the campaign with four friends “after a drink.”

This diverse array of contenders in the French election is likely to be winnowed down to a head-to-head race by the country’s two-round voting system. Unless one candidate wins a (highly unlikely) majority in the first round, the two candidates who receive the most votes in round one (April 23) will face off in a second round (May 7).

Write to Kate Samuelson at kate.samuelson@time.com.