Gerald Tremblay is on the ropes. The momentum is with his nemisis Louise Harel. What is shaping up is a municipal election campaign of chaotic vanity. In the past few weeks so many candidates have been jockeying for position that you need a program to know who they are and what they stand for.
Des sondages ont suggéré que deux mandats ont été suffisants et qu’il est temps d’élire un nouveau maire. Pris dans des scandales, le maire Tremblay et son administration semblent errer sans but, sans objectif et sans direction. Sa seule réponse à tout cela a été de dire qu’il ne veut pas installer d’affiches de campagnes parce qu’elles ne sont pas écologiques. Ses tactiques politiques ont été de tergiverser, de retarder et d’attendre pour prendre des décisions. Comme Henry Aubin le mentionnait dans un article de janvier dernier , « Le maire Tremblay ne peut s’enorgueillir de beaucoup d’accomplissements majeurs. Il est en place davantage parce que le public est ennuyé par les politiques de la grande ville, qu’il jouit une machine politique bien rodée, qu’il est omniprésent aux événements publics et que les médias sont généralement inattentifs et dociles. Le manque d’opposition efficace signifie aussi qu’il fait face à très peu de pression. »
Aujourd’hui, au moment où monte la tension politique et que des affiches de campagne commencent à apparaître, cela ne fait que rappeler son incompétence aux électeurs. Il est facile d’identifier le moment où ses problèmes ont commencé : le 17 septembre 2007, le jour où un de ses candidats vedettes, Bernard Labonté, l’ancien président du Bureau de commerce du Montréal métropolitain et maire de l’arrondissement Ville-Marie, du centre-ville, a remis en question les capacités de leadership du maire et s’est séparé de lui et de son parti Union Montréal pour siéger comme candidat indépendant. Depuis lors, le maire Tremblay a eu à faire face aux indiscrétions de deux de ses principaux associés, Frank Zampino et Robert Marcil, qui ont accepté des voyages de la part d’entreprises qui transigent avec la ville; il a ensuite dû faire face à la trahison d’autres collègues, y compris celle la présidente de son parti, Brenda Paris, qui est passée au camp de Vision Montréal avec Louise Harel où elle se présentera dans Notre-Dame-de-Grâce .
Tremblay gained a significant ally last week in former PQ minister Diane Lemieux who will run as a Union candidate in Ahunstic. On the other hand Harel, a former Parti Quebecois minister, has enlisted two star candidates: Pierre Lampron, former SODEC and Québcor media executive and former Liberal MNA Nathalie Rochefort . Lampron will be her candidate in Rosemont-Petit Patrie, Rochefort will run in the Plateau. In the meantime, Richard Bergeron, is letting former judge John Gomery, considered biased by a Federal Court for the way he handled aspects of his inquiry, be the poster boy for his Project Montreal Party. Since Gomery has a daughter running for Bergeron his motives seem clear, but backing a man who questions 9/11 seems a bit surreal. But so is this campaign.
Everyone, it seems wants to run the city but no one can tell voters how. It is occasionally useful for a politician to have bold and decisive ideas. But so far, none of the candidates inspires the extraordinary confidence you might expect in a chief magistrate. In one recent free-wheeling interview , Tremblay took the quiet approach. He claimed that he and his team have become ``victims of their own integrity.’’ Unfortunately, once you claim victim status, it’s pretty much game over. After eight years in office, Tremblay, a Harvard educated corporate lawyer, seems dispirited. Not all of it is Tremblay`s fault, - Harel was the Minister who pushed through our three levels of unworkable duplicating municipal governance - but the city`s per capita municipal debt is now the highest in the country, Montreal’s infrastructure is deteriorating and its public services declining.
With the campaign officially set to begin this week who could have imagined that so many political non-enties would make a bigger media splash than the candidates running for public office. John Gomery, for example, enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame five years ago when he presided over a commission of inquiry into the sponsorship scandal. If you choose to remember, Gomery reached conclusions that didn’t stand up in a court of law. Earlier this month he came out of retirement to support his daughter, Cym, Project Montreal`s candidate in NDG. Incredibly, even though Project Montreal can’t win, the news that Gomery was on side was worth a full page spread in the Globe & Mail and La Presse.
And a lot of ink has also been spilled because human rights lawyer Julius Gray supports Louise Harel for mayor. As the apparent collapse of Tremblay’s Union Montreal approaches, Harel is pitching changes to the municipal charter, and her own unified vision of Montreal that includes a political agenda beyond the borders of the city’s 19 boroughs. A complete about-face from her days as the Minister who helped create this mess.
In this election, the alternatives seem worse than the status quo.