Charest seeks support of ‘silent majority’ Sept. 4
Jean Charest is calling upon a “silent majority” to re-elect him on Sept. 4 Quebec, when he will seek to tie a provincial record with his fourth consecutive victory.
The names of other Quebec premiers who have won four straight terms — Lomer Gouin, Louis-Alexandre Taschereau, Maurice Duplessis — are immortalized on major arteries.
But there will be no end of potholes on the road to Boulevard Jean Charest.
The bumpy ride will be due, at least in part, to a new political party whose presence threatens to create an impossible-to-call series of three-way races in ridings across the province.
Then there are the students. In the coming days, they will hold assemblies to vote on whether they should return to class in mid-August or resume strikes that have drawn international attention for their size and stamina.
If the strikes persist, will they feature the same rowdy scenes as this past spring? Will students continue to defy court orders and Charest’s protest law?
Will police finally begin applying that law, Bill 78, and its stiff financial penalties?
In the end, how will voters react?
In the face of such unknowns, the premier urged Quebecers on Wednesday to cast a vote for order. He billed himself as the candidate of stability — for both the economy and the street — against the chaos of protests and independence battles supported by his opponents.
“Now is the time for the silent majority to speak,” Charest told a news conference.
“In the last few months we’ve heard a lot from a number of student leaders. We’ve heard from people in the street. We’ve heard from those who have been hitting away at pots and pans. Now is the time for the silent majority.”
His opponents are counting on voters to question Charest’s timing.
A corruption inquiry, which Charest was forced to call after two years of successive scandals in municipal and provincial politics, only returns Sept. 17 from its summer break. His opponents will seek to keep the embers of public outrage alive during that summer lull.
If polls are to be believed, Charest’s main rival stands a good chance of becoming Quebec’s first woman premier.
Holding a slight edge in surveys, the Parti Quebecois has an experienced leader, Pauline Marois, who is entering her second election at the helm.
She helped buy peace within her party, amid grumbling about her leadership, by promising a new strategy for achieving independence.
The PQ has promised to introduce citizen-initiated referendums, like those commonly held in the U.S. and other countries.
If 850,000 Quebecers signed a petition then the province would hold a plebiscite on topics such as whether to separate from Canada.
It’s part of a broader package of democratic reforms being proposed by the PQ , along with the right to vote at age 16 and $100 limits on political donations.
The PQ is counting on such citizen engagement, and a team of high-profile candidates that includes several media personalities, to make up for Marois’ own lacklustre personal-popularity numbers.
She didn’t even wait for the election call to launch her campaign.
She held a news conference Wednesday morning and suggested integrity and ethics — not the student protests, and not Quebec independence — should be the key issue in the campaign.
“The most urgent issue here is replacing the tired and corrupt Liberal government of Jean Charest,” Marois said.
“Today, we’re not voting for or against a referendum. We’re voting for or against a government. The day there’s a referendum — and we’ll decide when that day arrives, I’m keeping the schedule open — there will be no surprises and citizens can make their choice.”
“We want Quebec to stand tall against the Canada of Stephen Harper,” she said.