This has meant that ever since Aurelie and the kids came back from France three weeks ago we (and when I say "we" I mostly mean Aurelie!) have been busy, busy busy. While the official start of the election process doesn't start until the 10th of March for the past three weeks Aurelie has been off to political meetings most mornings and to rallies most evenings. Yesterday she had her official photographs taken for the election literature (she looked fab). Me, I'm being a faithful house husband!
The voting system here is very different to the single transferable vote system that we Irish know and love (which is really very easy to understand, honest). In Reunion (and France in general) for the municipal elections they use a list system, with two rounds of voting (assuming that no list got more than 50% of the vote in the first round) where (as I understand it) the lists getting more than a 10% of the vote in the first round duke it out in the second round.
Aurelie's list is a coalition of le Mouvement Progres (Movement for Progress), Europe Ecologie Les Verts (the French Green Party) and le Mouvement Republicain et Citoyen (Movement for the Republic and Citizen). The list is lead by Krishna Badamia (from le Mouvement Progres) who as number one on the list is the candidate for Mayor of Saint Pierre, Aurelie is number four on the list (and the first Green) out of a total of fifty.
So over the next five and a half weeks we'll see how Aurelie's first election campaign goes!
