Charest faces tuition showdown
While CEGEP students reject a walkout, many in university vote to boycott classes
“If students are coming back, it's not because they finally decided ... that Charest was right.”
UNIVERSITé DE MONTRéAL PROFESSOR MICHEL SEYMOUR
For Liberal Leader Jean Charest, the decision of tens of thousands of CEGEP students to return to class this week could be seen as a major coup, or a debilitating political blow.
For the man who started his campaign to win a fourth mandate with a pledge to restore law and order, the spectre of protesters running amok and shattering bank windows in the heart of an electoral campaign would, to many, have justified his party’s creation of a special law to restore peace.
At the same time, the image of students peacefully heading back to CEGEP could be taken as a sign his tough stance and enforcement of a summer timeout worked. Be it chaos or capitulation, Charest was in a win-win situation.
There’s no doubt the summer break had an effect, noted Bruce Hicks, a political science professor at Concordia University. The first protest after the lull, organized by militant student federation CLASSE, was a relative dud.
“I think that’s why their spokesman bowed out when he did,” Hicks said, referring to Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois. “That first demonstration of only 200 people was a sign of the beginning of the end, that Bill 78 did have an effect in terms of a timeout — it cooled things off.”
While Charest may have been able to capitalize on this success in normal times, when the debate would have been between him and the students alone, the fact he’s in an election complicates things, Hicks said.
“In an election campaign, he doesn’t have the same bully pulpit he had as premier prior to the election,” he said.
Media tend to try to give equal space to each candi- date during campaigns, robbing Charest of the limelight and control of the message. As well, during a campaign other issues come to the fore, such as corruption or secularism, that drown out the ones Charest might prefer to highlight.
If the Parti Québécois wins, Hicks said, students can see it as a victory for their movement, for it was they who influenced the PQ to promise to freeze tuition fees if elected and put the issue before a public summit. (On Thursday, leader Pauline Marois said the PQ would index university tuitions to the cost of living, not freeze them.)
Université de Montréal Professor Michel Seymour, who was among a group of 2,000 teachers who signed a manifesto supporting the student protest and calling for an end to Bill 78 this month, sees Charest’s battle with the students as more of a lose-lose situation.
If the students return to class, Charest loses his momentum and the vote of people who considered public security their main concern. If the boycotts continue, it could signal that “no matter what Jean Charest does, he can’t control the students, so maybe we have to change the government,” Seymour said.
Ultimately, Seymour sees voters’ viewpoints on the student strike, be they positive or negative, cancelling each other out. Other issues — such as the arrival of cor- ruption czar Jacques Duchesneau on the scene for the Coalition Avenir Québec, and the fact Charest is going for a fourth mandate in a province where voters rarely grant more than two in a row to any party — take precedence, and forecast Charest’s coming downfall, he said.
In addition, the student issue won’t be going away, especially if Charest is re-elected, Seymour added.
“Citizens know that if students are coming back, it’s not because they finally de- cided they were okay with an increase to tuition fees and that Charest was right,” he said. “No, it’s because they’re tired and concerned about their own careers, and that’s normal: They were the ones to support this struggle for six months.”
He predicts the Liberals will come in third, after the PQ and the CAQ.
The CEGEP students who voted to return this week were among the more moderate of student groups during the long student protests, those most willing to compromise or go back to school, Hicks noted.
CEGEP students weren’t generally the problem during large demonstrations that got out of hand, he said. University students were more militant, “and we don’t know how they are going to behave."
"There’s still an unknown there.”
While the majority of CEGEP students have voted to return, more than 10,000 university students have voted to maintain their boycotts, and there are many more university association votes to come.