Main French Polynesia parties fail to make gains

Transcript

None of French Polynesia's main political parties has managed to make any substantial gains in the municipal elections.

In many townships, the incumbent mayors retained their position, with some though only in last Sunday's run-off.

Walter Zweifel asked the publisher of the Tahiti Pacifique monthly, Alex du Prel, if people tended to vote for the politicians they knew.

ALEX DU PREL: It's kind of, you know, a little tribal thing. Certain mayors have been so long in the position that they're part of the surroundings. Also, I think we have a show in most of the towns, big centralised government with nice affiliated city halls just doesn't play anymore, and there have been quite a few votes that way just to make sure that we don't have the old system like in 2002 when 42 out of 44 townships were in the hand of Mr Flosse's party.

WALTER ZWEIFEL: I mean the big loss happened some time ago, but the return for Tahoeraa, which we saw last year in the territorial election, did not eventuate this time.

AP: No, Mr Flosse thought, and many people thought also this would happen, you know it would be the same orange wave because orange being the colour of Mr Flosse's party and it didn't happen that way, or not at all. Actually Mr Flosse's party even lost one township. The most amazing was Mr Temaru, in Faa'a, a lot of people had predicted he would lose in his township which he has been mayor since 28 years, I think, and he turned up on the first turn with 67 percent of the vote. A totally unknown phenomena in French Polynesia.

WZ: At the same time the Tahoeraa had good success in Pirae with Edouard Fritch retaining, or reclaiming, the mayoralty that was held by Beatrice Vernaudon.

AP: Yeah, but that everybody knew because, number one, Pirae is the basic town, the Alamo of Mr Flosse's party, and when he lost elections six years ago, it was only by 28 votes, so it really was a freak loss. So he went in first, on the first turn, with 60 percent of the vote, but that was totally expected.

WZ: Turn out was above 71 percent, that is very high compared with mainland France, why is that?

AP: Well, Tahiti, it's a small place, everybody knows each other, once you get out of Papeete and the three big town, we have hot dog stands, and grills all over, and lets say it's a good way to take you away from the TV set and also it's a good way to meet people you haven't seen in quite a while.