Oscar Temaru again elected President of French Polynesia
Updated
For the third time since 2004 Oscar Temaru has been elected President of French Polynesia. Mr Temaru won the presidency after a second round of voting and will have a workable majority of 37 votes in the 57 seat Assembly. Since 2004 Mr Temaru, Gaston Flosse and Gaston Tong Sang have between them been elected and ousted as president a total of eight times. The Editor and publisher of Tahiti Pacifique magazine Alex Du Prel says the 37 seats majority may end the culture of unstable politics in the country.
presenter: Geraldine Coutts
speaker: The Editor and publisher of Tahiti Pacifique magazine, Alex Du Prel
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DU PREL: Well, actually we have an old president that's back, it's the fourth time, it's Oscar Temaru.
COUTTS: And how did the voting go?
DU PREL: Well, it was at the beginning, it was a little suspense, but on the second round, he ended up with 37 votes against 20 from Mr Tong Sang. So apparently one thing is good, we seem to have a stable majority now.
COUTTS; So the 37 will be a workable majority?
DU PREL: Oh yeah, absolutely. Before it used to be 29-30. It was around one pivot which allows any kind of blackmail from any of the members of the old majority. Now it's 37 to 20, so it should be stable and we should see the end of the old blackmail sing song.
COUTTS: Now as we've seen in the past many times Alex, it sounds okay on the day of the voting, but in the next days and not to shortly after, we see people like Mr Tong Sang mounting a challenge against the incumbent president. Is this going to happen this time?
DU PREL: I don't think so, I think everybody number one is tired of these games and then every time in the old days, it was always the majority was depending on one or two persons who and somebody among the majority could be bought out and move over to the other one, This is why this is our eighth president since 2004.
COUTTS: In his speech, did Oscar Temaru make any reference at all to independence, because it is one of his platforms from the past?
DU PREL: No, this is one thing. Everything was very quiet. Generally when a president gets elected, especially Mr Temaru, you have big expressions of joy and everything and this is what was kind of unusual. Everything was quietly done, there were no infusions of victory cries. He was very soft about it. He didn't mention independent everything. and journalists asked him about independence, and he says listen, this is not the time. It is a far away goal, but right now we are going to have to build the economy and so on and so on. As well Mr Temaru as Mr Tong Sang are very soft in their purposes, the one wishing the best to the other one and so on. So it was done in a very civil way and without this old not hatred, but heavy competition we used to have before. Mr Flosse was very quiet. He didn't even appear. His son-in-law who was a candidate in the first one, made a long speech, but it was more a speech to promote his own person. So we didn't have the passion that we had in the past.
