In Marie-Victorin, the PQ citadel could not resist the onslaught of the CAQ and its candidate, Shirley Dorismond. For the leader of the PQ, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, the news does not bode well.
At 30.07% of the vote, the defeat of its star candidate, Pierre Nantel, is honorable. In a long-time PQ stronghold, it is no less real.
In fact, David the PQ simply could not win against Goliath the CAQ. The CAQ machine is formidable. A skewer of ministers massively occupied the land of the constituency.
Among Francophones, the persistent popularity of Prime Minister François Legault also has a lot to do with it. Even the latest revelations about the first wave in CHSLDs have not affected it.
The PQ leader swears, however, that it will be put back to the ballot on October 3. Let’s lend him the intelligence to know in his heart of hearts that nothing will happen.
Reality does not forgive. Since the 1995 referendum, the decline of the PQ has been a major trend. Former Prime Minister Jacques Parizeau had made the difficult observation. The PQ, he had concluded, was nothing more than a “field of ruins”. And with him, his sovereignist option.
However, in politics, unlike the tourist industry, the ruins hardly attract crowds. Even the undeniable quality of the remaining 7 PQ MPs has nothing to do with it.
Humiliating
Marie-Victorin’s partial also hit the liberal troops and their leader, Dominique Anglade, hard. At 6.93% of the vote, their candidate, Émilie Nollet, finished 5th. Either behind Anne Casabonne of the Conservative Party of Quebec (PCQ). It’s downright humiliating.
On the South Shore of Montreal, Éric Duhaime’s PCQ is nevertheless a three-hour drive from its otherwise fertile lands in the national capital. He nevertheless succeeded in getting ahead of the PLQ, which is moreover the official opposition.
A partial is of course only a temporary microclimate. At least, most of the time. The results in Marie-Victorin are, however, of a different nature. Because they are reminiscent of the myth of Cassandra, whose prophecies no one believed despite their veracity.
In Marie-Victorin, we indeed see the present, but also a little of the future. We see a PQ weakened to the point of no longer being able to win in a fortified castle.
We see a PLQ which, in a predominantly French-speaking riding, is being overtaken by the PCQ – the youngest to arrive in the court of third parties.
The Cassandres of the CAQ
It’s almost to wonder what Jean Charest thinks. He who, when he led the PLQ, had given him three consecutive victories. Oh yes. He too saw the future. Far from the PLQ, in its ancestral conservative lands.
The sovereignist PQ and the federalist PLQ were however once two formidable adversaries. For half a century, they exchanged power. Above all, they dominated the political dynamics of Quebec and Canada.
But here they are today, like two Siamese twins dangling at the edge of a possible precipice. The fair and terribly sad illustration of the end of two great dreams swept away for never having come true.
Fire the dream of Quebec independence. Fire also the dream of a truly renewed federalism. Like what, the birth of the CAQ owed nothing either to chance.
After all, the CAQ was created jointly, it should be remembered, by a former PQ minister and a former PLQ recruiter. Probably two other Cassandres.
Reference-www.journaldemontreal.com