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Communists aim for mayor's chair Just as it has in every municipal election since 1970, the Communist League is putting forth its own sacrificial lamb as a candidate for mayor of Montreal. >> This time it's Michel Dugré, a member of the Union of Needletrade, Industry and Textile Employees (UNITE) in Montreal. This is Dugré's second crack at a municipal campaign; he last ran in 1990, at the height of the Oka crisis. According to Michel Prairie of the Communist League, Dugré pulled in around 1,000 votes. >> Among the items on the Communist League platform: defend Cuba's socialist revolution, cancel the Third World debt, withdraw imperialist troops from Yugoslavia and refuse to support the Calgary Declaration on Canadian unity. Mayors of metropolises-in-decline have a lot of influence over these things, you know. >> Their platform also includes affirmative action hiring for women, blacks, immigrants, natives and Québécois. Huh? Québécois? The government's own figures show a dreadful lack of anglophones in the civil service. "I suppose it would be good to create pockets of employment for anglophones," says Prairie, who nevertheless insists that francophones still endure widespread discrimination in the job market. >> "We know we will not get elected," says Prairie. "We don't have any illusions." Good thing, too. --Philip Preville
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