DUCEPPE TO THE RESCUE
Leadership change shows how moribund the Bloc is
Recent events remind us that we are not living in the golden age of Quebec independentist leadership.
The remembrance of the late Jacques Parizeau invited a comparison with his current successor as Parti Québécois leader in which Pierre Karl Péladeau comes off as even more of a political lightweight.
A eulogy delivered at Parizeau’s funeral was enough for one columnist to see the independence movement’s hope for renewal in Jean-Martin Aussant, whose Option nationale splinter party, in Aussant’s only general election as its leader, received two per cent of the vote.
And the federal Bloc Québécois party has turned for resuscitation to Gilles Duceppe, only four years after he led it in a general election in which it was all but wiped out, and Duceppe was unable to save his own seat.
So excited were independentists by the sight of Duceppe arriving with defibrillator paddles in hand that someone leaked word of it to commentator Jean Lapierre on the morning of what was supposed to be Parizeau’s day.
Whoever did the leaking showed as little consideration for the former PQ premier as the cops in clown pants assigned to his state funeral (yes, we get it, you’re not happy about changes to your pensions — by a Liberal government).
Apparently, however, the leaker felt that the announcement couldn’t wait even one more day.
The Bloc is facing a general election in four months, and has found only about 20 candidates for the 78 Quebec ridings. The latest public poll results gave the Bloc only 13 per cent of the vote in this province — 10 percentage points less than it received in its 2011 election debacle.
It’s not even a real, live political party anymore. In a living party, a democratically elected leader isn’t overthrown and immediately replaced without so much as a call for nominations or anybody objecting. But that’s how the Bloc forced out Mario Beaulieu and brought in Duceppe.
The backroom deal is reported to have been inspired by a private Léger poll suggesting that with Duceppe as leader, the Bloc would get about 30 per cent of the vote in Quebec.
So for a while at least, Thomas Mulcair’s New Democratic Party will face renewed competition for the nationalist votes it took away from the Bloc (and Duceppe) in 2011.
And with Duceppe, the Bloc instantly gains at least one advantage: Duceppe will be the most experienced of the party leaders in the crucial French-language campaign debates.
But the actual election isn’t due until October, and hypothetical “what-if” polls are notoriously unreliable predictors of actual votes.
Even Bernard Landry, who hangs around the political scene getting attention like a buzzing fly inside the house, is reported to have been almost as popular as Duceppe in the poll. This suggests that who voters really wanted as Bloc leader was anybody but Beaulieu.
At this point, it’s a mystery why the movement persists in what is known in medicine as “therapeutic obstinacy,” in trying to prolong the life of its federal party long after it outlived its usefulness. Maybe Quebec needs a “dying-with-dignity” law for political parties, too.
Duceppe has only the summer to make the Bloc relevant again, but has little to lose. If he is not successful, it’s Beaulieu who will get the blame. Either way, Duceppe will get credit for coming out of retirement at 67 for the good of the movement.
Péladeau, however, has apparently promised Duceppe that he will risk his own prestige and that of the PQ in support of the Bloc in the federal campaign. So another poor showing by the Bloc may be more damaging to Péladeau than to Duceppe.
At this point, it’s a mystery why the movement persists in what is known in medicine as ‘therapeutic obstinacy,’ in trying to prolong the life of its federal party long after it outlived its usefulness. Don Macpherson