The local council of Molenbeek-Saint-Jean will hold an extraordinary meeting on 6 September to vote on the candidature of new Vooruit councillor Saliha Raiss, Mayor Catherine Moureaux (PS) said on Tuesday.
Raiss's nomination has gathered the necessary 23 signatures - a majority of the members of the council. However, this is an alternative majority, obtained thanks to the opposition since MR (Mouvement Réformateur), despite being a member of the coalition, refused to sign the nomination paper.
Asked on Tuesday morning on BX1, MR President Georges-Louis Bouchez said his party would not support Raiss’s nomination. He gave as his reason the neutrality of the State, charging that the Flemish Socialist councillor was violating it by wearing the Islamic headscarf while carrying out her duties.
“The MR will not sign her nomination paper and will not vote for her accession to the post of alderwoman," Bouchez said. "When you are an alderman, you have an executive function that we consider incompatible with wearing a faith symbol.”
“We're not saying to her 'you can’t be an alderwoman;' we're saying 'if you want to be an alderwoman, you must remove your faith symbol in the exercise of your function.' It’s not discriminatory, we apply it to all religions, all philosophical convictions.”
For opposition representatives, this episode illustrates the dissension within the Socialist/Liberal majority.
“We have signed. It makes no sense: Saliha Raiss has been a member of the local council for five years, she is legitimate and can be an councillor," the leader of the Ecolo group, Emre Sumlu, said "The real problem lies elsewhere, in the dissensions within the majority, which can no longer hold together and is holding the opposition hostage in order to achieve a quorum."
"Despite our appeals, the mayor continues to chair the meetings of the local council, which does not contribute to an appeasement,” Sumlu stressed.
“It is up to the local council to decide what is good for Molenbeek, not Georges-Louis Bouchez from his ivory tower," Belgian Workers Party, PTB, group leader Dirk De Block commented. "The majority is scuttling itself, and that’s not good for the municipality,” added De Block, whose councillors also signed the nomination paper.
It remains to be seen whether a majority will emerge when the vote takes place by secret ballot: some opposition sources did not rule out the possibility of MR councillors supporting Raiss’s candidacy.
