Embrace boring elections!

[Re: “Election notebook,” Oct. 8] A recent screening of Bruno Dubuc’s documentary La Fin du Néandertal about Projet Montréal and a short radio interview with Andrea Levy on Alert Radio, gives me plenty of reason to think that the upcoming municipal elections are not only not boring but a good opportunity for Montrealers to get better acquainted with the ways in which supposedly mundane municipal politics are part of global politics.

For this reason, I don’t understand why Patrick Lejtenyi’s last two Election Notebook columns sought to spin apathy and a feeling of disinvestment. Couldn’t he rather suggest how tedium and monotony works to make people feel ineffective and keeps the electorate uninterested and uninvolved? It’s often at the level of the everyday, the mundane and the overlooked that capitalism seeks new territory to penetrate and it could very possibly be at the level of the boring and the lacklustre that important political stakes will be claimed.

A person’s salary does not necessarily make them more or less interesting and certainly doesn’t say much about their politics. Perhaps Lejtenyi should interview Margaux Chetrit, the matchmaker featured in the People column. Maybe she can hook him up with the candidate that will give him the orgasm he needs.

>>Marc J. Léger

Hooray for Projet Montréal

[Re: “Election notebook,” Oct. 8] Kudos to Patrick Lejtenyi for figuring out what the mainstream media have gone to such great lengths to disguise. In the Southwest, and across the city, citizens sick of the cycle of corruption and scandals that successive Union Montreal and Vision administrations have wrought are turning to a fresh alternative.

In the words of Justice John Gomery, “It is urgent that voters’ faith in public institutions be restored, and I believe Projet Montréal is the only party willing and able to bring about the necessary renewal.”

And he isn’t the only one to have noticed. Polls show that in a scant two weeks of campaigning, Projet Montréal has surged six percent in the polls while the tired old parties sink into a morass of their own making.

The only major party to have released a platform (projetmontreal.org), Projet Montréal will restore integrity to city hall (having already refused anonymous and corporate donations) and focus on sustainability, public transportation and citizen consultation.

Even the Gazette’s Henry Aubin thinks Projet Montréal’s platform “contains the most visionary ideas for the city since Jean Drapeau’s rule in the 1960s and 1970s.”

But what really sets Projet Montréal apart are the people. They aren’t politicians looking to line their own pockets and do as little work as possible. They’re concerned citizens like you and I, community organizers, academics, artists and volunteers who want to make this city great again.

In districts across this city, Projet Montréal has a real chance to win. But only if we band together, reject the paternalistic contempt the other two parties show us and stand up for the type of city we want to live in.

We’ve begged for a real alternative for years. Now that we have one, there’s no excuse for not voting.

>>Ethan Cox

No really, Jaggi
Singh for mayor!

[Re: “Jaggi Singh for mayor!” Letters, Oct. 1] I wholeheartedly endorse Jonathan Wexler’s suggestion that Jaggi Singh of “No One Is Illegal” fame, become Montreal’s next mayor. It may sound weird but makes a lot of sense!

Singh truly represents the multicultural anarchists of Montreal. For the last five years, he has been actively pushing for a grassroots activists’ revolution, in which real issues facing the Montreal citizenry have been raised, namely issues relating to live-in-caregivers, precarious conditions of non-status people, un-reasonableness of Security Certificates, self-determination of indigenous peoples, gender oppression and evils of capitalism!

Long live Anarchist revolution! Long live Jaggi Singh!

>>S. Gohar

Nobody’s perfect

[Re: “Debating Dershowitz,” Letters, Oct. 8] Barry Merson says he is willing to disregard the imperfections of Alan Dershowitz. Does Merson regard Dershowitz’s belief in torture, e.g. the insertion of a sterilized needle under the fingernails to produce “excruciating pain,” as simply an imperfection?

>>David Pinto

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