What the Harel is going on?

As unsavoury as that statement sounds, the worst of it is that she is attempting to come back as mayor of the very city she fought to solidify into one big unmanageable mess.

Harel's run for the mayoralty is perfectly doable, as many of the people she alienated, angered or enraged during the whole forced mergers debacle are now living in demerged municipalities and will not be voting for a Montreal mayor in November. She is safe from their wrath, and as pointed out by those who constantly tried to twist the demergers into a language issue, many of the former municipalities that were willingly swallowed up by the megacity have a relatively high francophone population who just might vote for her.

But Harel's past may be her worst enemy. It is in the best interest of any mayor to keep personal political views (other than those at the municipal level, of course) away from public scrutiny. Would a Westmount mayor hold office very long after admitting to voting for the Parti Québécois, even though they have a perfect right to do so and, theoretically, it would not affect their ability to govern the city? Probably not. Diplomacy is key in politics, so Harel can never be taken at face value due to her separatist past.

Another point hotly criticized by her opponents is that she is admittedly unilingual. Certainly nothing wrong with that — but as mayor of Canada's second-largest city, she would have to give speeches in other cities, and anyone speaking French to an assembly of Calgary's establishment would be considered as rude as anyone doing the same in English in Lac St-Jean. And the idea of having on-the-spot translators follow her around is too absurd to contemplate.

But if Montreal and Quebec history have taught us anything, these drawbacks are negligible. In fact, if Gérald Tremblay's popularity keeps slipping over the summer, the only real problem with Harel's candidacy is that she could actually win.