Today Montreal city council will decide who will become mayor of Montreal for the next year.
Union Montreal is backing Richard Deschamps, and although many people have left the party in recent days, the party still has 26 seats on council, more than any other party.
Vision Montreal and Projet Montreal, which have 16 and 10 seats respectively, have not put forward any candidate.
But in the past week Michael Applebaum, the former Executive Committee chair, quit Union Montreal to run as an independent, and many Union Montreal councillors followed suit.
Applebaum is the only other mayoral candidate, and he claims he is best suited to form a coalition government until the 2013 municipal elections.
This morning's session begins at 10 a.m with a public council meeting that a question and answer session.
Each candidate will then have 20 minutes to address councillors and campaign for their votes, but will not have to face any questioning at that time.
The 63 sitting councillors will then cast votes. If there is a tie than speaker Claude Dauphin, who is a member of Union Montreal, will choose between the two candidates.
