The French-speaking city of Montreal elected an Anglophone mayor on Friday for the first time in 100 years, following his predecessor’s resignation over allegations of corruption.
Michael Applebaum won a city council vote to serve as interim mayor for only a year, with a promise not to run in the next municipal election in November next year.
Applebaum speaks French, but it is not his first language, and Anglophones in Canada’s French-speaking province of Quebec rarely hold prominent political roles.
Because former Montreal mayor Gerald Tremblay resigned last week, a year before an election, provincial law dictates that his successor had to be picked by the city council on an interim basis.
Tremblay stepped down as a public inquiry hears testimony linking him to graft and organized crime. Martin Dumont, who worked for Tremblay’s Union Montreal party, testified that the mayor knew about illegal financing within his political party and did not care. Tremblay, mayor for 11 years, has denied any knowledge of wrongdoing and says he was let down by underlings.
There is no suggestion he profited personally and he said he was resigning to spare his city further difficulty.
Frank Zampino, once a top adviser to Tremblay, faces fraud charges and current employees have been suspended.
Following Tremblay’s resignation, Gilles Vaillancourt, the mayor of Quebec’s third-largest city stepped down after 23 years as mayor of Laval, a suburb of Montreal.
Quebec, the only province with French as its official language, has fought to maintain this linguistic identity, despite changing demographics due to immigrant populations.
In Montreal, Canada’s second-largest city, with a population of 1.7 million, about 13 percent of people claim English as their mother tongue and the notion of an Anglophone mayor would have seemed highly unlikely just a few weeks ago. Even last week, Applebaum appeared to have a slim chance of success but he went about building support, and as details of the corruption scandal unfolded, he grew increasingly popular.
In his speech before the vote, Applebaum cast himself as a historic candidate not for linguistic reasons, but because he wanted to create a multi-party coalition, bringing together former foes to clean up the scandal-plagued city.
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
‘MOBILIZED’: While protesters countered ICE agents, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz activated the state’s National Guard to ‘support the rights of Minnesotans’ to assemble Hundreds of counterprotesters drowned out a far-right activist’s attempt to hold a small rally in support of US President Donald Trump’s latest immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Saturday, as the governor’s office announced that National Guard troops were mobilized and ready to assist law enforcement, although not yet deployed to city streets. There have been protests every day since the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ramped up immigration enforcement in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul by bringing in more than 2,000 federal officers. Conservative influencer Jake Lang organized an anti-Islam, anti-Somali and pro-US Immigration and Customs Enforcement
NASA on Saturday rolled out its towering Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft as it began preparations for its first crewed mission to the Moon in more than 50 years. The maneuver, which takes up to 12 hours, would allow the US space agency to begin a string of tests for the Artemis 2 mission, which could blast off as early as Feb. 6. The immense orange and white SLS rocket, and the Orion vessel were slowly wheeled out of the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and painstakingly moved 6.5km to Launch Pad 39B. If the
RSS