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Presidential candidate Valérie Pécresse: rumors about the electoral roll
Photo: LUDOVIC MARIN / AFP
France's conservative Republicans appear to have had a dog on the electoral roll for April's presidential nomination.
An advisor to MP Éric Ciotti, who lost the vote, admitted to having put his dog on the list at his address, the investigative online platform Mediapart reported.
The idea for the action, intended as a joke, came from a beer mood.
He also paid the membership fee of 30 euros for Clovis the dog, but did not buy the animal a mobile phone that would have been necessary to take part in the election.
In the vote at the beginning of December, the Conservatives chose ex-Minister Valérie Pécresse for the first time as a woman candidate for the upcoming presidential elections.
Afterwards, there were rumors that some of the approximately 140,000 party members who were called to make the decision only got on the voter list at short notice and under questionable circumstances.
First, the newspaper »Liberation« wrote of three dead and one dog on the list.
Then the political advisor admitted the action with the dog Clovis.
Pécresse described the reports of irregularities in her election as the umpteenth attempt to destabilize her.
At the slightest suspicion, her competitors would have sounded the alarm, she told broadcaster BFMTV.
She was the woman who was cleared to be shot in this election campaign.
After a campaign performance that was rated as weak, criticism recently rained down, but some also think that Pécresse is being approached in a misogynist manner.
kfr/dpa
