Alliances form opposition to Union for Monaco

There are just nine days left for Monaco's political parties to put together their candidate lists for the parliamentary elections.

Monegasques cast their vote on 3 February 2008 for the National Council [1], but the names of the 24 representatives must be submitted by 25 January in order to be eligible to stand. Once elected, they'll serve for 5 years, voting on the legislation and the budget for the Principality.

The current National Council is led by members of the Union pour la Principaute (UP) and the Union Nationale pour l'Avenir de Monaco [2] (UNAM), jointly referred to as the Union Pour Monaco [3] (UPM). At the time of writing, there are two lists of opposition candidates: the Monaco Ensemble and the RPM.

The Monaco Ensemble is an alliance of the Synergie Monegasque [4], the Promotion de la Famille Monegasque [5] (PFM) and the NIM [6]. They've asked the Parti Monegasque [7] and the Valeurs et Enjeux [8] to join them because so far, they only have 16 candidates in their list.

The Rassemblement pour Monaco [9] (RPM) joined forces with the Principaute Ethique Progres [10] (PEP) in October 2007, but since then, the PEP candidates have agreed to stand under the single banner of RPM, so as not to confuse the voters. They have now been joined by the Enjeux Monegasques [11] to present a 3rd list to the voters, under the joint name of Rassemblement et Enjeux [12] pour Monaco.