won, were invalidated by the Constitutional Council due to renewed electoral fraud). Michel Debré decisively defeated his Communist rival Paul Vergès when the by-election took place in May 1963, and he became the leader of Réunion's Gaullist and right-wing forces opposed to the autonomy of Réunion demanded by the local Communist Party. Debré used his connections in Paris to promote the economic development of the island and bring its housing and infrastructure closer to metropolitan French level, which benefited Saint-Denis as capital of the island. In 1964, the French National Assembly voted the so-called 'Debré Law' (named after its promoter) that facilitated land expropriation and slum clearance in France's urban areas. The law helped to eradicate the shanty towns that had started to appear in Saint-Denis and other Réunionese cities. The next year was launched the construction of large public housing projects (or council estates) in the neighborhood of , east of Saint-Denis's city center, to rehouse the people evacuated from the shanty towns, as well as provide housing for low-income newcomers to the city arriving from the countryside. Construction of these projects, capable of housing close to 10,000 people, lasted until 1973. In December 1964, the first TV station in Réunion opened in Saint-Denis, a local station of the national broadcaster ORTF (which has now become ), whose studios, located at the Barachois near the city center, produced local news programs. A university campus affiliated with the Aix-Marseille University was opened gradually in Saint-Denis between 1964 and 1970, later officially becoming the University of Reunion Island in 1982. In August 1967 the first nonstop commercial flights between Saint-Denis and Paris (operated by Air France's Boeing 707) were launched after the lengthening and modernization of Gillot Airport's runway. Saint-Denis's new modernist city hall was constructed in the 1970s. The city hosted the first Indian Ocean Island Games in 1979 (which it hosted again in 1998 and 2015). 1991 Chaudron riots Economic development and rising incomes, thanks to financial transfers from metropolitan France, led after the 1960s to a Westernization of the local culture and the emergence of a consumer society: TV sets became ubiquitous, large hypermarkets appeared on the outskirts of the city as in metropolitan French cities, selling many products imported from metropolitan France, and the ownership of motor vehicles became generalized, leading to heavy traffic during rush hours in a city whose public transports were not developed. The