Voters in New Caledonia's Loyalty Islands will go to the polls again after the French supreme court annulled the results of this year's provincial election.
The court upheld a complaint by the leader of the newly formed Labour Party, Louis Kotra Uregei, who found there was such a number of improperly cast proxy votes that the final results could have been different and his party could have won an additional seat.
This means two rounds of voting will be held in December to choose a new 14-member provincial assembly.
Seven of them will also sit in the territorial Congress.
In the May election, all 14 seats were won by pro-independence parties, with the Labour Party securing two.
The anti-independence camp hopes the new election will secure it a seat in the assembly.
This is the second time in ten years that a challenge succeeded in annulling the Loyalty Islands result.