La Roche sur Foron Municipal Elections 2008Part 2

The election campaign took a nasty turn near the end when someone hacked into Thabuis‘s web site and redirected visitors to a porn site. Thabuis complained to the local Gendarmes who went to the work of a person on Alain Guichard’s list. The Gendarmes took that person to the Gendarmerie along with his son. This prompted Alain Guichard to post on his site “Michel THABUIS s’en prend maintenant à nos enfants !!” (Michel THABUIS is now blaming our children!!).

It turns out that who ever was doing the hacking was in Geneva when they did it and that they might be a civil servant working for the city of Geneva, as the address of the computer that did the hacking was located in a Geneva city government office. There was even an article in the Tribune de Geneve ), the largest daily paper in Geneva.

In the end Thabuis was reelected I feel because none of the three other candidates were able to make the case that they would have been better mayors and done things different, different in a way that would have made and will make La Roche a better place. It’s true that Thabuis didn’t get more than 50% of the vote and there for one could say as Alain Guichard did that the voters voted in the majority against Thabuis. But that’s not really the case as I see it, as the first round had four candidates and the second round had three. Circumstances that make it difficult to have a majority.

I think another reason that Thabuis was reelected was that many of the new voters, like myself, didn’t really see the criticism directed at Thabuis as justified. Yes, there has been a lot of construction in La Roche over the last few years but still La Roche is a good place to live and the mayor can’t stop all new building in a region that is growing by the thousands per year.

Click here to see the results of the first and second round.

Click here to see votes being counted.

Click here to see the four mayoral candidates, a link to their web site, slogan and a campaign flyer.