Montreal, the world's second-largest francophone metropolis after Paris, elected an anglophone mayor Friday for the first time in a century. Michael Applebaum, 59, was voted in as interim mayor by fellow city councillors in a secret ballot after his predecessor Gerald Tremblay resigned amid corruption allegations. Although English is his first language, Applebaum is also fluent in French.
Applebaum will be inaugurated on Monday and lead Montreal, which is located in the largely French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec and has a population of 3.8 million, until the next scheduled municipal election in November 2013. Tremblay's former right-hand man had sought to distance himself from his old boss by quitting the ex-mayor's once dominant Union Montreal party this week and forming alliances with opposition parties to vote against UM's chosen candidate to succeed Tremblay.
Tremblay resigned as leader of Canada's second-largest city on November 5 after witnesses linked him to illegal party financing skimmed from city construction contracts as part of an alleged mafia scheme. A commission headed by Superior Court Justice France Charbonneau had heard that the mayor's political party received kickbacks from construction bids.
Witnesses also told the commission investigating alleged graft, bid-rigging and kickbacks in the awarding of government construction contracts that the mayor was aware of illegal party financing and campaign spending. Tremblay flatly rejected the accusations. The Charbonneau commission was launched after a leaked police report pointed to evidence that construction companies were banding together to keep prices high - and possibly had links to organised crime. It will release its findings next year.
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