A working group will be set up topropose to the (municipal) council avenues of reflection for the future of the bust of Roger Nols, without denying the historical reality or exacerbating the sterile polarization“, said Monday at the end of the day Cécile Jodogne (DéFI), current acting mayor of Schaerbeek, in reaction to the online publication in the scientific journal Brussels Studies of a study concluding on the need for a popular debate on the future of the bust of the former Schaerbeek mayor (in office from 1970 to 1988).
A press conference will be organized in the coming weeks. This will aim to “inform as widely as possible and set up a working group with interested people, citizens, experts or politicians“, she pointed out.
It was the municipality of Schaerbeek that had asked academics to carry out this study following an interpellation of the municipal council in October 2017 by the Movement for Racism, Antisemitism and Xenophobia (MRAX), which asked the removal of the bust from the main hall of the town hall.
This solution, considered very radical, is not desired by the municipal authorities. “It is true that, for some of us, the memories of the affair of the separate counters (1971 – 1975) or his arrival by camel on the forecourt of the communal hotel (1986) remain present“, observed Bernard Clerfayt, mayor in office in 2017. “The work of Serge Jaumain (Université libre de Bruxelles – ULB) and Joost Vaesen (Vrije Universiteit Brussel – VUB) forces us to remember that Roger Nols served four successive terms at the head of Schaerbeek, each time with higher electoral scores. To remove the bust of Roger Nols without contextualizing it in its time is to take the risk of forgetting this period of our history and we know that to forget is to allow it to happen again“, he concluded.
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