Schaarbeek’s mayor files a complaint after insults in the city council

Things were noisy again in the Schaarbeek municipal council on Wednesday evening. During question time, speakers from the visitors’ gallery were regularly shouted at or interrupted.

Among other ‘sale pute’ (‘Dirty whore!’) was hurled at acting mayor Cécile Jodogne (Défi). Although it is initially difficult to hear on the images of the municipal council, municipal councilor Anton Schuurmans (CD&V) was able to confirm that the insult in question was shouted.

And Jodogne couldn’t laugh at that. “If you don’t find ‘dirty whore’ an insult, then I don’t know what to say,” she immediately said in the city council.

During the city council meeting she came back to X: “So one ‘sale pute’ Being mentioned in the middle of a city council meeting is democracy in 2024? Let us return to respectful and constructive, calm debates in our democratic forums without violence. Insults and swearing disqualify all statements and their speakers.”

Balance

When the displeased Schaerbeek residents read the tweet from the visitors’ bench at the very end of the session, a lot of commotion can be heard again and they deny having said ‘sale pute’.

It’s enough for Jodogne. “If we don’t say what they want to hear, they protest, shout and be violent. I want us to be able to have a normal city council again,” the mayor said. “It has become very difficult to find the balance between the necessary transparency of the debate in the city council and calm.”

In the meantime, the mayor has announced that he will file a complaint “following the insults expressed yesterday by members of the public on the sidelines of the city council’s question time”, X reports.

Habitué

It is not the first time that the Schaerbeek municipal council has been interrupted. Certainly since the introduction of the Good Move circulation plan, municipal councils and meetings organized by the municipality have resulted in cheering, interruptions and insults.

According to Schuurmans, it concerns a group of citizens of 50 to 60 people who sit there again and again. “Some are really a bit habitue become. They have already been involved in the circulation plan, but are now against the entire council.”

And this was also evident from the two first citizen interpellations, which were welcomed with applause and encouragement by the visitors. The interpellations sound like a long indictment against the administration about, among other things, insecurity, mobility, spatial planning and education. “This council is nothing more than a vassal that does everything it can to look good for its regional ‘overlord’,” Fatiha Ahcini concluded the first interpellation.