Abutaleb resigns as mayor: “This city makes me a Rotterdamer”

Rotterdam Mayor Ahmed Abutaleb ended his 15-year term as mayor at a farewell ceremony in the city’s Central Park on Sunday.

Hollande, 62, will formally hand over power to his successor, Carola Schouten, on October 1, but the event in Hutt Park was a chance for citizens to say goodbye.

“It will all end,” Abu Taleb In his closing remarks, he said“For almost 16 years, I have served as your representative in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Europe and around the world with all my heart and dedication.

“I will always be a Rotterdamer because you made me a Rotterdamer.”

Performers at the event included musicians, artists and dancers, including local singer Lee Towers, who sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”

The first Muslim

Abutaleb first took office in 2008, becoming the first Muslim to be appointed mayor of a major city in Western Europe. He came to the Netherlands at the age of 15 from the Rif region of Morocco.

Previously, he served as Junior Minister for Social Affairs for the Labour Party (PvdA) in Jan Peter Balkenende’s fourth cabinet. He joined the Labour Party in 2003 and became a city councillor in Amsterdam a year later.

In 2021, Abutaleb shared the World’s Best Mayor award with Philippe Rioux of Grigny, France. The jury praised his “commitment to treating all citizens as ‘Rotterdamers’, regardless of their origin and background”.

Abutaleb, known as a law-and-order hardliner determined to curb the city’s illegal drug trade, travelled to Colombia to study the South American company’s efforts to combat smuggling and called for all containers passing through Rotterdam to be checked for contraband.

Adversarial

His confrontational approach has sometimes put him at odds with the city’s Muslim community, and after a 2015 jihadist attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo killed 12 people, he told extremists who could not tolerate satire to “go away.”

More recently, he has been criticised for his support for Feyenoord City, whose plans to build a new football stadium, housing and leisure complex on the banks of the Maas River collapsed in 2022, leaving the city with a €50m hole in its budget.

He was also criticized for not raising the Israeli flag after the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, choosing instead to fly it at half-mast to avoid exacerbating “polarization in our city.”

A difficult task

Abutaleb recently said he decided to resign after three terms as mayor after consulting with his family. “I would even say that family issues were the instigator of this decision.” He told local broadcaster Rijnmond.

“It’s not easy to be a leader in Rotterdam.” He told NOS on Sunday“It’s a very difficult task, perhaps one of the most difficult tasks we face in the Netherlands.”

“The whole world is at your feet, we have people from 175 countries, and everything that happens in the world has an impact on Rotterdam.”

He praised former Christian Union Deputy Prime Minister Schouten as a “good man with a kind heart.”

He urged her to promote unity among the community. “Division weakens us. Unity gives us strength.”