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Smelly socks – final story (we hope) [(Alduy, c’est Perpignan, et Perpignan, c’est Alduy. Bravo Monsieur le Maire ! Basil Howitt closes Perpignan’s saga of the smelly socks. Fortunately last Sunday’s affair of the unsavoury armpits (see below) came to nothing, thanks to the punctilious voting procedures set up by The Seven Wise Men. 3 A selection of blogs: 3 [(The conclusion is self-evident: the citizens of Perpignan haven’t believed for one single second in this story of general and organised fraud, and the ballyhoo surrounding it, far from unsettling them, has irritated them and united them behind their slandered mayor. [(Aggression, offhandedness, arrogance, the campaign of Jacqueline Amiel-Donat has rebounded against her. [(Amiel-Donat must open her eyes. Whatever her intellectual qualities, she doesn’t have a profile popular enough to become mayor. She is assuring the continuation of the Right in Perpignan. 3 Schadenfreude? 3 After what he himself has described as “une année éprouvante” (a trying year), Alduy may also be revelling in a little schadenfreude at Amiel-Donat’s expense. She has, after all, been nursing a burning ambition to oust Alduy and become mayor of Perpignan ever since the smelly socks affair exploded fifteen months ago. The hullabaloo was triggered off, you may remember, by those voting slips so notoriously secreted into the socks and pockets of Georges Garcia, Presiding Officer of Ward 4 and brother of one of Alduy’s fellow candidates. (See smelly socks pieces passim, listed below). 3 “Massive and generalised fraud” 3 Jacqueline Amiel-Donat and her supporters immediately screamed blue murder, accusing Alduy of masterminding a campaign of “massive and generalised fraud”. After submitting a 166-page dossier to the Tribunal Administratif, Amiel-Donat finally succeeded in getting that election annulled in April this year. Alduy’s appeal had not been upheld, hence the re-elections on 21st and 28th June. 3 Defamation 3 Meanwhile no criminal charges of any kind of fraud have ever been brought against Alduy, whereas Amiel-Donat is to be tried in the Criminal Court on 15th July for defamation (of Alduy and his liste). The reason for Alduy’s easy triumph this time is that there was no united opposition against him – whereas fifteen months ago most parties combined under Amiel-Donat to try to overthrow him in the second round. Indeed they almost managed it, with Alduy’s majority down to a mere 574 votes in a poll of 41,983 voters. 3 Crumbs of comfort for Amiel-Donat – but none for Codognes. 3 At least Amiel-Donat can console herself with the extra 8% of the vote share (2,167 votes) she gained in yesterday’s second round – clearly in part from Codognes who lost 627 votes and a 1% share. 3 The Armpits Scare 3 The smelly socks saga threatened to spawn a sequel when, on the afternoon of the first round, Mme Marie-Clare Mas, a fellow candidate of Alduy, was discovered with a bundle of voting slips under her arm. This incident inevitably hit the headlines and threatened to become The Affair of the Unsavoury Armpits. Fortunately most people saw the funny side: Mme Mas is an avid collector of voting memorabilia and the eventual destination of the slips would otherwise have been the dustbin! 3 Results: First Round 21st June 2009: 3 – Turnout 53.76% 3 Results Second Round: 3 [(© 2009 Basil Howitt)] Basil Howitt has also written [(You can contact Basil by email: [basil.howitt@packsurfwifi.com->basil.howitt@packsurfwifi.com])] |
] (Camerata Productions 1993)
] (Sound and Vision 1995)
] (Robson Books 1998)
] (Sound And Vision 2002)
