Veteran city councillor Marvin Rotrand has been elected as interim leader of the opposition Coalition Montréal following the resignation on Monday of party chief Benoit Dorais.
Dorais, mayor of the Sud-Ouest borough, said he would begin the New Year as an independent city councillor.
Rotrand, who was first elected in Snowdon district in 1982, proposed on Thursday to hold a party convention in May to adopt a strategy for next years’s November municipal election.
“Should Coalition Montréal ally itself with another party?” Rotrand asked in a statement, suggesting one possibility for the convention. “Our executive committee believes in the importance of ensuring the existence of a third political force in Montreal. On the other hand, certain members of the party believe that merging with another party would help us reach our goals.”
Coalition Montréal was founded under the late Marcel Côté, an economist who ran unsuccessfully against Denis Coderre in the November 2013 election. Since that election, several members of Coalition Montréal have joined Coderre’s party.
Rotrand announced that Coalition Montréal councillors Réal Ménard and Elsie Lefebvre will continue to vote with the city’s executive committee to exercise their political influence, and that he would support the Coderre administration in matters regarding public transit.
Read the full story at The Montreal Gazette.
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