Mayor Luis Miranda reigns over Anjou as sovereigns reign over their kingdom. For 25 years, he has been mayor of this suburb in the city, in the east of Montreal.
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
Life being what it is, there are problems of incivility in Anjou, like…everywhere else. Small tatas are defying the rules and damaging street furniture, as is the case in parks… forever.
At the end of August, Anjou banned free soccer on the synthetic pitches of the Goncourt, Lucie-Bruneau and Roger-Rousseau parks, to restore order.
It seems that young people have been riding on the synthetic surface soccer fields on bicycles and scooters, which is damaging the surface. And supervisors were reviled when they intervened. In short, small bums.
Mayor Luis Miranda would even have been personally sent for a ride by said little ones bums. Furious, the first magistrate did neither one nor two, he closed the said lands for the free soccer beaches…
Reaction of young soccer players from Anjou: what about us? We who have done nothing? We are being punished for the slippages of a few little idiots?
One of the young people, who felt he had been unjustly wronged, did what a citizen can do: he presented himself to the municipal council to ask Mayor Miranda to revise his positions and to make allowances. His name: Hocine Ouendi.
I watched the video footage of the city council of October 4. The young Ouendi is all the more polite. He calls out to the mayor calmly, during the question period, asks him to reconsider his decision…
Hocine Ouendi is 15 years old. In the exchange, Hocine Ouendi is calm and respectful. Guess who looks like an angry teenager who just got told he can’t play with his PS4 because he didn’t do his math homework? Yes, Luis Miranda, 67 years old.
With an evil eye, the mayor interrupts the young Ouendi repeatedly, constantly taunts him, complains about the behavior of the young people, he grumbles, interrupts the teenager again, before telling the breathless story of the moment when he, the mayor, intervened with young people and how, ladies and gentlemen, he was disrespected!
And there is even the line dance of the old people which has been disrupted by these young people, just imagine!
Not confusing: Mayor Miranda yells at young Ouendi as if he had the whole terrifying Parc Goncourt gang in front of him.
At one point, the mayor interrupts his tirade and even admits to being “aggressive” with the young Ouendi. But be careful: he has a good reason! He, the mayor, would have been treated “aggressively” in the header of a petition targeting him! Petition of which he suspects aloud the young Ouendi of being one of the signatories…
Anyway, Mayor Miranda looks hysterical.
Funny fact, the mayor also thought that Hocine Ouendi was an adult. However, Hocine Ouendi is 15 years old. When he discovers this, the mayor gets carried away again: “Having known, I would not have answered you! “He then apostrophes the mother of the teenager, still as brittle: “I should not even have spoken to him! »
The teenager, however, has the right to ask questions and he calmly asked a legitimate one: aren’t you punishing a majority of young people who do not cause trouble by acting against a minority of troublemakers?
Response from the mayor, exasperated: the file is closed!
I am not saying that Mayor Miranda is wrong on the substance, on the incivilities. I am not a specialist in Angers public security. Maybe these little ones bums in scooters are as terrifying as the Hells Angels and that the soccer fields had to be closed to restore law and order in this city where “it is good to live and grow”, in the words of Mayor Miranda in an epistle to its citizens1…
I say that a mayor who loses control with a young person who politely and legitimately asks him relevant questions at the municipal council is a boil on a certain democratic ideal. We want some kids 15-year-olds come to hound elected officials, in a calm and respectful way. But Mayor Miranda says it: at 15, a teenager should not challenge a mayor…
After 25 years as mayor, maybe a stump of power, like closing soccer fields, can go to a man’s head, go figure…
I also say, Mr. Mayor, that you should answer a question, a question that you yourself asked the mother of young Ouendi…
You said you didn’t have “that problem” with baseball, with the swimming pool, with tennis or with hockey, you insisted: on these sports grounds, people have respect…
Then, after having oddly ordered the mother to “educate your children” (hers seems devilishly well educated): “Why do I only have this problem with soccer? Ask yourself the question. To ask the question is to answer it…”
Could you enlighten us, Mr. Mayor?
What is the answer that seems so obvious to you: why do these “problems” only occur in soccer?