More than a week after ex-mayor Gérald Tremblay resigned in the wake of a corruption scandal, 63 city councilors chose Applebaum by the slimmest of margins to succeed him until the next municipal election in November 2013.
The decision marks the first time since 1912 — when medical professor and doctor James John Edmund Guerin was mayor — that Montreal has been led by an anglophone.
The decision marks the first time since 1912 — when medical professor and doctor James John Edmund Guerin was mayor — that Montreal has been led by an anglophone.
No one in the race to succeed Tremblay questioned the integrity or competence of Applebaum, a councillor since 1994 and mayor since 2002 of the predominately anglophone borough of Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. But some of his colleagues did have reservations about selecting someone whose accent when speaking French pains the sensitive francophone ear.
“I’m an anglophone. That’s clear. At the same time I grew up in Montreal. I speak French. I speak it with an accent,” he said after winning the close vote over fellow councillor Richard Deschamps.
Despite doubts about his accent, it seems that the promises made over the course of Applebaum’s raucous 11-day campaign gave him an edge. He pledged to roll back a planned 3.3-per-cent tax increase, instead holding it to the 2.2-per-cent cost-of-living. He promised that city hall’s powerful decision-making body, the executive committee (which he had chaired since 2011) would include seats for the municipal opposition parties and would meet in public rather than behind closed doors.
Applebaum also promised, after resigning from Tremblay’s Union Montreal party when its members chose Deschamps as their favoured candidate, that he would sit as an independent interim mayor and would not use his position as a launch pad for a mayoral run in 2013.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Allan Woods
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