Use of seguir a

[elchocoano]

I'm reading a report which came out in February 2022 on crime statistics in Bogotá. The 16 localidades of Bogotá were rated acccording to total crime which occurred in 2021. Kennedy is worst, followed in second place by Engativá.

A Kennedy le sigue Engativá.

On reading this sentence, I first thought that I would have expected to see the direct object pronoun lo (or perhaps la), not the indirect object pronoun le. In other words, I took Kennedy as a preceding direct object with personal a.

To try to explain this grammatically, I looked at every usage of seguir in my Gran Diccionario Oxford, 4th edition, 2008. The only thing that I could find was an entry under transitive:

(en el tiempo) to follow: seguir a algo/alguien to follow something/somebody.
e.g.: los disturbios que siguieron a la manifestación; el hermano que me sigue está en Asunción.

With this, the only explanation for my sentence that I can come up with is:

We have a usage in rating order analagous to the time order entry in the dictionary. The preposition a is required but is not a personal a and does not indicate grammatical direct object. Grammatically, the object is indirect (thus explaining the use of le), but semantically the usage is transitive.

I'm concerned that my Oxford dictionary seems to restrict this usage to time order.

Thanks for any help with this.

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

Your dictionary is right; I think that "el hermano que me sigue" is the same case as "A Kennedy le sigue Engativá". "Seguir" doesn't only mean to pursue or to follow, but also to be next in order.

If the speaker in your dictionary example is Laura and Pedro is her younger brother: A Laura le sigue Pedro.

In both cases, there is some ranking or order where someone/something appears after someone/something else.

Look out: if we say "a Laura la sigue Pedro", he's chasing after her.

Also, we can say "De Laura sigue Pedro", and we're clearly establishing an order without the need of an indirect object pronoun.

[elchocoano]

Thanks very much for confirming!