[A-List] Back to the basics

["Jim Yarker" <sjy_estrien@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Back to the basics
Boisclair is wrong to abandon the push for sovereignty - there are more 
sovereignists in Quebec than those who vote PQ
Josée Legault
The Gazette (Montreal )
vendredi 27 avril 2007



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When Andre Boisclair says there?s no leadership crisis in the Parti 
Quebecois, he?s either lying to voters or lying to himself. But beyond his 
denial of the obvious, what?s more important is his intent to take on his 
party members to change the PQ program.

Boisclair might be lying to himself when he denies his leadership failings, 
but it?s PQ members who will be lying to themselves if they ignore what he 
has in mind when he talks about a "new, transformed PQ."

In his speech at the swearing-in of his 36-member caucus, he gave some clear 
hints of his intentions. Lumping the PQ and the Action democratique 
together, he repeated "two-thirds of MNAs are opposed to the constitutional 
status quo," adding "what matters is to get more more powers" for Quebec.

After the election, the PQ leader already sounded intent on taking his party 
back to the days of Pierre Marc Johnson?s national affirmation. His latest 
speech confirms it. There?s no doubt Boisclair will try to sell this as the 
"pragmatic" way to see things, keeping sovereignty as a dream for much, much 
later.

But should the PQ leader succeed in this virage - which requires him to hold 
a party convention and win a confidence vote - this would turn the PQ into a 
clone of the ADQ. That would spell the end of that party by making it 
redundant.

Even those Pequistes who would be tempted to follow Boisclair in siding with 
Mario Dumont?s autonomist approach in the hope of setting up the Rest of 
Canada for another Meech Lake-style psychodrama that would lead to a 
sovereignist victory, are dreaming.

First, it costs Dumont nothing to say he wants to reopen the constitution. 
He?s in opposition. But watch Dumont soften his tune if he becomes premier. 
Second, no one in Ottawa would be stupid enough to create another failure by 
opening up the constitutional Pandora?s box in any serious way.

The reality is that there is very little, if any, chance of having a repeat 
of the post-Meech trauma. So that leaves PQ members with a clear, 
existential choice that could either buy them some time, or throw them into 
oblivion.

If they retain their raison d?etre, maybe, just maybe, sovereignists could 
start supporting the PQ again, unless it?s already too late. But if PQ 
members follow Boisclair, the already autonomist ADQ could take even more of 
what PQ support is left. When you have real beef, who wants bologna ?

After the PQ got its disastrous 28 per cent of the vote in the last 
election, most analysts and Boisclair blamed the result on the promise of a 
referendum "as soon as possible," as outlined in the party?s 2005 program. 
Quebecers, they say, just didn?t want to hear about that stuff. If that were 
true, then why did the PQ stand at 50 per cent in the polls after it adopted 
that same program ?

If anything, it?s not the referendum promise that did in the PQ on March 26. 
Since 1996, the PQ suffered a setback every time sovereignty and the means 
to achieve it became a side issue for PQ leaders.

In 2005, it?s true Bernard Landry put the R-word in the program mainly to 
try to save his own skin in his party. But the real reason that Pequistes 
demanded the referendum reference was because they had grown tired of the 
"winning-conditions" refrain and had stopped trusting their own leaders to 
take care of the party?s option once in power.

Putting sovereignty on the back burner has been a failing strategy for the 
PQ. Fewer sovereignists have voted PQ in each election since 1996. In the 
last election there was a 17- to 20-point gap between those who support 
sovereignty and those who voted PQ.

On March 26, the problem wasn?t the referendum promise. It was that when the 
promise was finally made 12 years after the last vote, the PQ had elected a 
leader who just couldn?t carry out.