The citizens of Celles, a small town of less than 6,000 inhabitants, to the west of Hainaut, will have to vote again. The Local Elections Council has decided to invalidate the result of the elections of October 13 in this municipality.
On October 13, the list of outgoing mayor Michaël Busine (LB-OC) missed the absolute majority by just 18 votes. Two other lists, Les Engagés and Celles Demain, quickly announced a majority agreement, with a narrow majority, of 9 seats against 8, and a mayoral sash promised to Jean Delestrain.
The mayor’s list (LB – OC) and the Celles Moment list (0 seats) had filed appeals. They had identified around forty disputed proxies (signature problem, erasure, missing document, etc.), a sufficiently high number of disputed proxies to – perhaps – have tipped the balance during this very close election.
The Walloon Public Service had already issued an opinion in this matter. At the end of his own checks, he confirmed that irregularities had been noted in the batch of proxies and that this could have had an influence on the verdict of the ballot.
The Local Elections Council, a body made up of provincial governors surrounded by experts, therefore agreed with this opinion and decided to cancel the results of the municipal election in Celles. According to the analysis carried out by the Local Elections Council, 22 proxies out of 215 did not meet, after analysis, the regularity criteria determined in the Code of local democracy and decentralization. However, 18 votes were enough to change the result of the election. “The number of votes tainted by irregularity exceeds this tipping threshold“, underlines the Council according to which “the conditions were therefore met to pronounce the cancellation of the elections in Celles.”
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