After the Parti Quebecois lost its second referendum on sovereignty back in 1995, party leader Jacques Parizeau stood in front of a crowd of the party faithful to deliver the customary concession speech. It wasn't a speech he'd spent any time preparing: most opinion polls had suggested that Quebecers would vote in favour of sovereignty, and Parizeau had a written text in his jacket pocket ready for that historic moment. When the vote went narrowly against the PQ, Parizeau appears to have gulped down a glass or two of something fortifying, and then proceeded to tell his shell-shocked and disappointed supporters that "It's true that we lost, but to what? To money and the ethnic vote".
That was something of a lapse for Parizeau, who usually came across as an urbane and agreeable type. But it's exactly the kind of sentiment that permeated the PQ's strategy in the provincial election campaign that culminated yesterday in the party's trouncing at the polls, after only eighteen months in office. It's hard to recall a more inept election campaign, or a more unpleasant one. The party's current leader (though not for much longer) is a career politician named Pauline Marois. She comes across as the kind of woman you encounter from time to time in the supermarket checkout line, muttering about dark-skinned people and boisterous children.
The election call was preceded by the introduction of a thoroughly unpleasant secular "charter of rights", which would among other things have prevented government employees from wearing any visible symbols of religious faith. This would have applied to Christians wearing small crucifixes or Jews with their kippas, but no-one was left in any doubt that the real targets were the province's burgeoning Muslim population. Secularism is popular in formerly "priest-ridden" Quebec, and the charter had its supporters in rural areas and smaller towns, though the chattering classes in Montreal were aghast. However, all opinion polls showed that the charter was a low priority item for most voters, far behind such issues as the economy and employment.
Another issue that ranked low with the voters was sovereignty, or even the threat of another referendum on the subject. That's inconvenient for the PQ, since "making Quebec a country" is the party's main raison d'etre. In a stunning error of judgment, Mme Marois introduced as a star candidate a wealthy businessman named Pierre Karl Peladeau, who immediately delivered a fist-pumping speech calling for an immediate push for sovereignty. It didn't help that Peladeau -- a kind of Canadian Rupert Murdoch, owner of a large chain of right-wing news media -- is a notorious union-basher, not a good fit with the PQ's traditionally more left-leaning base. The party's support immediately plummeted, and the election was as good as lost from the moment Peladeau joined the campaign.
There are suggestions that this election may be the last gasp for Quebec sovereignty. It would be rash to draw that conclusion: it only takes two people to start a political party, and it only takes an inept government to leave the way open for all kinds of ideas to take hold with the voters. Still, it's striking that the age cohort on which the PQ now relies for most of its support is the over-55s, who have fond memories of the two previous referenda. It's hard to see how the party will be able to sell its message to the younger generation -- and doubly hard if, as seems possible, the abrasive Peladeau is installed as Marois' replacement.
The age of the PQ's support base, by the way, provides an interesting contrast with the Scottish independence referendum, now less than six months away. Scotland's first minister, Alex Salmond, was anxious to extend the franchise for the referendum to sixteen-year-olds, presumably calculating that the young might be more keen to take a punt on independence than their parents and grandparents. Yesterday's results in Quebec suggest that might not be the case.
The other big contrast between Quebec and Scotland lies in the tone of the campaigning. Quebec's was marked by mudslinging and insults. In Scotland. almost all commentators have remarked on the civility of the proceedings on all sides*. The issues are being debated fiercely but fairly; perhaps the most stinging insult so far has been Salmond's description of PM David Cameron as a "feartie" for refusing a TV debate! Marois and the PQ lost by appealing to the baser instincts of their voters, whereas Salmond is trying, at least at this stage of the campaign, to offer a positive vision. It remains to be seen whether that's a winning strategy.
* I wrote that sentence before coming across these cretinous comments from Lord Robertson.
No comments:
Post a Comment