Pacific

Dubois fails to annul Tahiti election result

12:16 pm on 20 November 2015

Teura Iriti and Vincent Dubois Photo: AFP

France's Constitutional Council has rejected a bid by an unsuccessful French Polynesian candidate for a French Senate seat to have the election voided.

Vincent Dubois lodged a complaint with the French High Commission in Tahiti in May to ask the court to annul the vote which saw the vice-president, Nuihau Laurey, and an assembly member, Lana Tetuanui, elected as the territory's two new members of the French Senate.

Mr Dubois says the election was unfair because the two winning candidates had the support of the local government.

In February, Mr Dubois and Teura Iriti lost their French Senate seats after a French court ruled that a march by hundreds of the Tahoeraa Huiraatira supporters to the polling station on election day amounted to undue pressure on the 700-strong electoral college.

Mr Dubois has had the support of the leader of the Tahoeraa Huiraatira Party, Gaston Flosse, who is his father-in-law.

The ruling in Paris has now confirmed Mr Laurey and Mrs Tetuanui as the territory's parliamentarians in Paris.