The French Polynesian veteran politician, Gaston Flosse, has been allowed to keep his two seats as French senator and French Polynesian assembly member after the French Constitutional Council refused to enact a Tahiti appeal court decision.
The court in Papeete declared him ineligible for an elected office last month when it gave him a suspended one-year jail sentence for misuse of public funds.
But the Council in Paris has declined to enact the ruling, accepting Gaston Flosse's lawyers' arguments that he should be allowed to keep his mandates until the case has run its full course.
After his conviction in Papeete, they took the matter to France's highest appeal court in a bid to have the sentence quashed.
This means that a final verdict is likely to be about a year away.
