Sarkozy’s Replacement Election in UMP in Shambles.

This is extremely funny.

The battle to succeed former president Nicolas Sarkozy at the helm of France’s main opposition party, the UMP, was left undecided early Monday after both candidates claimed victory amid allegations of ballot rigging.
              
Jean–François Copé, the party’s populist secretary-general, claimed a clear win while former prime minister Francois Fillon said he believed he had edged the contest subject to confirmation by the electoral commission which oversaw the poll.
              
“The French people are watching us. We do not have the right to announce the result before those in charge of the vote,” said Fillon in a swipe at Cope that reflected the acrimonious nature of the campaign.
              
Copés aid: “The activists of the UMP have accorded me a majority of their votes and therefore have elected me as the president of the party.”
              
Aides to Copé said he had won 1,000 more votes than his rival in a poll in which more than half of the UMP’s 300,000 members had cast their ballots. Fillon said he was 224 votes ahead.
              
But the electoral commission suspended the count till 10:00 am (0900 GMT) Monday, with the chairman saying records from 50 percent of the regions were missing.

France 24.

A more entertaining account is given Libération today.

“Populist” is euphemism for saying that  Jean–François Copé is pretty clearly a racist, or at the very least, hostile to immigrants. He stands for a “droite décomplexée”, that is a uninhibited right, against “la droite molle“, the  soft right.

In this vein Copé cited an anecdote in a book explaining his hard-right views. It concerned an alleged school student having a pain au chocolate ripped from his hands by yobs shouting that you do not eat during Ramadan.

A similar election near-tie near tie happened to the Parti Socialiste at their Reims Congress in 2008. Martine Aubry beat   Ségolène Royal  for the post of Party Secretary by a few dozen votes