Toss-up decides town hall winners

A TOSSED coin brought a place on Albanchez town council, Almeria, for British resident Steven Conway.
After the municipal elections count-up there were 238 votes for the PSOE socialists, 238 for the AIPAL independent group and one for the PP party.
The PSOE and AIPAL agreed to the toss-up to decide who would take the council’s seventh seat.
The ritual was supervised by the president of the Electoral Committee of the Huercal-Overa Zone who threw a €2 coin into the air.
Francisco Martinez, Albanchez mayor for the last 28 years, had asked beforehand for ‘heads.’
“We had agreed to call ‘heads’ but as the mayor got there first we accepted,” said Amador Lopez, who headed the AIPAL list, afterwards.
It was fortunate that they were not given the choice as the coin came down ‘tails’ and gave AIPAL an overall majority. The deciding seat went to Steve Conway, fourth on the independents’ voting list.
Lopez recognised that he and the other three AIPAL councillors have a hard task ahead of them.
They are all newcomers to politics and will have to deal with the problem of the village’s 200 illegally-built homes. The mayor elect also admitted that he did not know the size of the town hall budget. “The first thing we’ll do is look at the accounts and go on from there,” Lopez said.