Sarkozy party falls out over Paris mayor primary

France’s mainstream right-wing party, the UMP, on Saturday decided to press on with a primary to pick its

candidate for mayor of Paris, despite claims of irregularities. Officials rejected claims that the vote was a “fiasco” after one candidate claimed there were bugs in online voting technology.

After a vote for party leader that ended in bitter acrimony between the winner, Jean-François Copé, and former prime minister François Fillon, the UMP’s stab at a US-style primary in the capital has provided new embarrassments.

The chairman of the party’s election committee, Antoine Rufenacht, decreed the vote of party sympathisers would go ahead even though one of the candidates claims the online voting system has bugs.

Rufenacht told the candidates to “shut up”, reminding them that the rules say that they should not make comments while the vote was taking place.

The party’s election committee met on Saturday to address concerns over the online system and decided the vote would continue, despite problems some people had logging on to the site on Friday, the first day of voting.

One of the candidates, Pierre Yves Bournazel, asked for the committee to meet after denouncing what he said were bugs in the system.

La suite : RFI