French Consular polls deferred

The sexennial French consular elections scheduled for May 30 have been postponed on account of the COVID-19 pandemic situation.

The announcement, which was posted on the French Consulate website, said that all the voting operations (online and onsite voting) stood cancelled. The future date of the election will be decided shortly.

Every six years, French citizens living abroad elect their representatives, called “councillors for the French living abroad”, at the Consulate, all over the world. In southern India, the elections involve French citizens residing in the Union territory of Puducherry, apart from Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

Three seats are to be filled for this constituency.

There are an estimated 4,500 voters, a majority of them in the Union Territory.

“We are relieved that our request to the French authorities to postpone the elections has been heard, keeping in mind the risks it involved for the voters, the candidates and the election duty staff. This decision favours general interest” said Chantal Samuel-David, who leads the “United for change” list of candidates for these elections (“Unis pour le Changement” in French).

There are five such lists headed by candidates for these seats and comprising six nominees.

“This is an election that stipulates gender parity. So, there are an equal number of men and women on the lists,” she said.

“This is the second time the Consular elections are being postponed due to the pandemic. It was earlier scheduled to be held around August last year, but got deferred...we had even started campaigning with our manifesto based on security, health and education,” Ms. Chantal said.

The voting modes are a hybrid of electronic, absentee voting (by nominating a representative) and physical voting at polling booth.

While electronic voting has commenced across the globe for various constituencies of expatriates, and the results expected to be announced by May 31, it is now up to the French Parliament to determine the election date for South India, North India and Madagascar.