Tahiti's Tapura names candidates for French Senate election

6:34 am on 3 August 2020

French Polynesia's ruling Tapura Huiraatira party has nominated the vice president Teva Rohfritsch as one of its candidates for the French Senate election at the end of next month.

Teva Rohfritsch

Teva Rohfritsch Photo: supplied

He was listed with an incumbent Lana Tetuanui to contest the two seats available to the territory for a six-year term in the 348-member body.

Rohfritsch is the Economy Minister who in March wanted to quit the government because he had failed to win the mayoral election in Punaauia.

Both Tetuanui and Rohfritsch used to be members of the Tahoeraa Huiraatira party which in 2014 secured the two Senate seats for Teura Iriti and Vincent Dubois.

However the two senators were forced to quit in 2015 when a French court ruled that a march by hundreds of party supporters to the polling station on election day had amounted to undue pressure on the 700-strong electoral college.

In the subsequent special election in 2015, the newly formed Tapura secured the Senate seats for its new members Tetuanui and then vice president Nuihau Laurey.

However in June, Laurey quit the party amid a public spat with President Edouard Fritch over the management of the Covid-19 outbreak.

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