Reuters/Toronto
Speculation swept Canada’s biggest city yesterday after Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who made global headlines last year for admitting he had smoked crack cocaine, was hospitalised with an abdominal tumour just six weeks before the mayoral election.
With biopsy results expected by the end of the week, Ford’s illness raised the possibility that he might have to pull out of the October 27 election after having clung to power through a string of scandals, including his appearance in expletive-ridden videos and accusations that he ordered a jailhouse beating.
Ford’s brother and campaign manager, Doug Ford, was expected to update the city on the mayor’s health and political future, but pundits were already mulling the mayor’s options in a close-run election race in which Ford is one of three frontrunners.
“To some extent or another, the future of the city rests in the status of a tumour in the mayor’s belly,” columnist Edward Keenan wrote in the Toronto Star, the city’s biggest daily newspaper.
“Whether he can carry on and fight, and what that will mean for his support, whether he needs to withdraw and turn a campaign that has been largely about his governance on its head, whether his brother might run in his place. The decisions need to be made soon,” Keenan wrote.
Today is the deadline for candidates to remove their names to the ballot and for new ones to be added.
Rob Ford’s brother Doug is also a city councillor.
News of the tumour broke in the early evening on Wednesday after the mayor went to hospital complaining of unbearable abdominal pains.
“It’s not a small tumour,” the hospital’s president said, noting that Ford had been suffering from pain for more than three months.