by JASON MILLETTE



Montreal mayor Denis Coderre seems to embody everything people claim to hate about smarmy, autocratic, two-faced career politicians.



In the last few weeks alone, he’s been described throughout the media as “a mayor who, like a carpet salesman, always lays it on thick”; “a one-man decision-making body who doesn’t consult”; “an easily triggered scattershot”; more interested in “the infrastructure of his ego” than any other infrastructure project; and “paranoid, cynical, vindictive — and blessed with a bulletproof sense of entitlement.”

So I can’t believe I actually have to write this, but here goes: on November 5, we need to vote the guy out.

But what could Coderre possibly have done, you might ask, to deserve such contempt?

CODERRE’S SKETCHY RECORD

Well, let’s go back to his time with the Liberal Party of Canada. After running for parliament and losing three times in three different ridings, he told a gathering of Liberals that he wanted to deport his Bloc Québécois rival Osvaldo Nunez, who had arrived as a refugee from Chile.

Coderre went on to defeat Nunez in Bourassa on his fourth try in 1997, soon becoming — ironically? — minister of immigration.

As a cabinet member under prime minister Jean Chrétien, Coderre was linked to controversies including the overthrow of Haiti’s first democratically-elected president, “shadowy funding” by a company accused of a vote-buying scheme, and of course the infamous Liberal sponsorship scandal.

“This Coderre is paranoid, cynical, vindictive — and blessed with a bulletproof sense of entitlement.”

Then, in 2013, Coderre abandoned federal politics to run for mayor of Montreal, and began by recruiting most of Gérald Tremblay and Michael Applebaum’s disgraced Union Montréal party. One of those candidates, Robert Zambito, resigned less than a week before the election due to a police investigation. Another, Michel Bissonnet, was found to have connections to the mafia.

Meanwhile, Coderre himself was caught on hidden camera making thinly-veiled threats to members of the city’s Hasidic Jewish community.

Finally, since becoming mayor, there’s the long list of well-documented grievances that have piled up against him: his mismanagement of the spring flood in Pierrefonds–Roxboro; his disregard for some of the city’s last remaining green spaces; his granite tree stumps on Mount Royal; his misguided and mean-spirited pitbull ban; his childish obsession with bringing back a baseball team; his ridiculous urban rodeo; his entire Formula E debacle; his lack of transparency at city hall; his overly chummy relationship with “his” police force; his intimidation of journalists and political opposition; and I could go on.

It can be hard to believe Montrealers actually voted for this guy in 2013. Why do people here and elsewhere put up with such arrogant, authoritarian blowhards? Maybe it has something to do with some deep psychological need for a domineering father figure, or a lack of trust in democracy or our ability to govern ourselves.

But the truth is that relatively few voted for Coderre in the last election. He

FOUR YEARS IS MORE THAN ENOUGH

Now, I know you might be cynical about voting, and I am too. Our democracy is severely flawed and most politicians really are liars or crooks. But if marking an X means anything anywhere, it’s in local elections — despite, or maybe because of, the fact that turnout is lower than at other levels.

And getting this particularly toxic personality out of municipal politics, and letting in a much-needed breath of fresh air like Valérie Plante and Projet Montréal, will mean more space for the kind of community organizations and social movements that bring about genuine change.

In fact, many of Projet Montréal’s candidates come from those milieus. For example, Plante herself is on the board of directors of the Broadbent Institute, whose website describes her hands-on experience working with victims of conjugal violence, giving self-defense classes, and providing training for young immigrant and indigenous women.

Similarly, Richard Ryan spent 20 years working in the community and health networks, as well as the local citizens’ committee, before becoming a councillor on the Plateau. Julio Rivera is director of an organization that has provided food assistance to families in Saint-Laurent since 1982. Jean-Pierre Boivin is a cégep teacher involved in the local citizens’ committee, community center, and youth center in Verdun.

And Ross Stitt, who was featured on Left Island a few weeks ago, has emerged from activist group Sauvons l’Anse-à-l’Orme to run for city council in Roxboro–Pierrefonds.

Meanwhile, lifelong politician Denis Coderre is running with the same old team of opportunists and apparatchiks who have become surprisingly accustomed to the stench of corruption.

The best time for us to get rid of them was four years ago. The second best time is now.