Former Overseas Minister Annick Girardin was stripped of her mandate as senator for Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon and declared ineligible for one year due to a “failure” in her campaign accounts, according to a decision by the Constitutional Council published this Friday, September 13.
“It is appropriate to declare, in application of article LO 136-1 of the electoral code, the ineligibility of Mrs Girardin for any mandate for a period of one year from the present decision and to declare her to have resigned automatically,” indicated the Sages in their report.
In its decision, the Constitutional Council recalls that legislative provisions require candidates in senatorial elections to open a “campaign account” in order to track “all income received and, depending on their nature, all expenses incurred or made with a view to the election”.
Problem with bank supporting documents
But in the case of Annick Girardin, the former minister was unable to provide the National Campaign Accounts Commission with the supporting documents for opening such an account, we can read in the decision.
This member of the Radical Party argued the “particularity” of the vote in Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, and asserted that she had opened a bank account “establishing that she had not incurred any expenditure or received any income”, but after the Commission’s decision to reject, the Sages also note.
After having held several portfolios between 2014 and 2022 (Secretary of State for Development, Minister of the Civil Service, Minister of Overseas Territories and then of the Sea), Annick Girardin was elected during the senatorial elections of September 24, 2023.
In Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, an archipelago of barely 6,000 inhabitants off the coast of Canada, only 39 electors were called to the polls and twenty of them had designated Annick Girardin to represent them.
Jacqueline Cormier-André and Patrick Lebailly, the two other candidates in the running in these elections, have also been criticised for their campaign accounts. The Constitutional Council will soon have to render its decision concerning them.
- BFMTV.com
