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Yukon News
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Marois resigns after Parti Quebecois suffers resounding loss in Quebec election Andy Blatchford Canadian Press
MONTREAL he party of Rene Levesque absorbed a devastating electoral blow Monday, a loss that knocked the Parti Quebecois’s vote count back four decades to its days as a fledgling political outfit. The result could trigger an existential emergency for the PQ, as it faces the realization that its very raison d’etre – Quebec independence – has been deemed politically toxic. Pauline Marois announced her departure after Monday’s defeat and very likely became the last PQ leader who will have served alongside Levesque, the party’s founding father. Levesque’s first generation of troops has failed in its mission to secede from Canada, but the next generation vowed Monday to fight on, with Marois’s blessing. “There’s a changing of the guard in the Parti Quebecois, a changing of the guard that represents the future,” Marois told a chanting room of supporters in Montreal during a consolation speech in which she announced she would resign. “And like Mr. Levesque had the habit of saying: ‘The future is long.’ ‘’ In its first-ever election in 1970, the PQ won less than 24 per cent of the popular vote. On Monday, it captured 25 per cent. Looking to the future, the PQ ranks include several possible successors who could make a run for the leadership. Among the potential candidates are magnate-turnedpolitician Pierre Karl Peladeau as well as Marois cabinet ministers Bernard Drainville and JeanFrancois Lisee. All three men delivered fiery speeches in the Old Montreal ho-
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Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois blows a kiss as she speaks to supporters on election night on Monday in Montreal.
tel before Marois took the stage. Drainville told the enthusiastic crowd that he wasn’t ready to give up on the sovereignty project. “We will never abandon it – never!” Drainville shouted into the microphone before leading the party faithful’s traditional chant of ‘We want a country, we want a country.’ But it’s unclear what the future holds for the PQ. The resounding loss at the hands of the Liberals is likely to force the pro-independence party
to do some soul searching as it faces the grim possibility that its dream of a sovereign Quebec is on hold for several years. The PQ has headed a Quebec government for only 18 months out of the last decade and has not earned at least 40 per cent of the popular vote since 1998, now a span of five general elections. It did, however, cling to Official Opposition status Monday after finishing ahead of the Coalition party. Marois, who lost her own seat
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of Charlevoix-Cote-de-Beaupre, came to power as Quebec’s first woman premier in September 2012 after winning 54 seats and 32 per cent of the popular vote. “The defeat of our party tonight without a doubt saddens me as much as you, if not more than you,” said Marois, who called the election last month when the PQ was atop the polls. Entering the campaign, opinion polls had suggested the minority PQ government was within striking distance of securing a majority mandate. But that support began to slide
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after Peladeau, Marois’s superstar candidate, raised his fist in the air and vowed to make Quebec a country – an idea most Quebecers oppose. Marois followed up the Quebecor majority owner’s dramatic proclamation by musing for days about how a sovereign Quebec would operate. Looking back, Peladeau’s maiden political speech was perhaps too forceful, said PQ supporter Steve Beauchamp. “Maybe he came on a little too strong when he put his fist in the air – it might have been a
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