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MADRID - FC Barcelona president Joan Laporta survived a confidence vote held Sunday that was brought against him by a supporter who was angered by the Spanish club's second straight season without any major title, final results show.
Less than half of all Barcelona supporters who cast ballots, 37.75 per cent, voted to keep the 45-year-old at the helm of the club while 60.6 per cent voted against him staying on, the club said on its web site.
But to be successful, the vote against Laporta needed to have the support of over two-thirds of voters with a minimum turnout of 10 per cent of the 118,528 club members entitled to take part.
Turnout reached 33.15 per cent, meaning 37,294 eligible voters turned out at Camp Nou to cast their ballots.
Of these 1.37 per cent cast blank ballots while 0.27 per cent of the votes cast were deemed invalid.
The result means Laporta and his team will be able to continue at the helm of the club until their current term expires on June 30, 2010.
Lawyer Oriol Giralt collected over 9,000 votes from fellow club members to force Barcelona to hold the vote after the Catalan side ended the season in third place, meaning it missed out on automatic qualification for the Champions League.
Under Laporta, who has headed Barcelona since 2003 and was re-elected in 2006, the club won back-to-back league titles and the Champions League but he has grown increasingly unpopular with supporters due to the recent drought in silverware.
Laporta responded to the club's third-place finish by replacing Frank Rijkaard as the club's manager with reserve team manager Josep Guardiola.
Guardiola quickly announced that he was not counting on the club's stars Deco, Ronaldinho and Eto'o for next season as he seeks to revive the team.
To be eligible to vote supporters had to be of legal age, been members of the club for more than a year and their membership must have been up to date. - AFP/vm
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