Thursday, June 12, 2014

Marois Leaves the Stage With One More Lie

It's finally summer here in Quebec and most of us can be forgiven for wanting to make the best of the sun without thinking about the perils of politics, corruption, deficits or the merits of federalism versus sovereignty.

Perhaps we are more inclined to consider the weighty choice between beer or wine, hot dogs or burgers and in truth,  whatever our political beliefs we all share the common desire to get the most out of our skimpy summer, whether it's a trip to Old Orchard beach or a picnic in the local park.
From the already completed Grand Prix to the upcoming festivals, Montrealers will take to the streets and parks with reckless abandon, adopting minimalist garb, both men and women, sometimes a people watcher's delight, sometimes not so much...
It is of course, our famous 'terrace' season, where sipping a libation during the afternoon in a restaurant, al fresco, an experience only topped by doing the same at night beneath the stars sky.

So I'll try to keep this light, a commentary on the very sad and humiliating exit of Pauline Marois from the Quebec political stage and do so in quoting the famous bard, in the spirit of...  "A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.."

It is the Canadian and indeed Quebec way to give an outgoing politician a break, a merciful  and unchallenged exit with few in the media prepared to kick the hapless sap delivering their swan song.

In this respect, the media reminds me of a pack of vicious dogs that attack and savage an animal, but who give up after a thorough mauling, leaving the victim badly injured and barely alive, as if the fun lasts only as long as the victim resists.

And so Pauline gave her final speech before an audience of pequists in Drummondville, perhaps unawares or deliberately innocent of the fact that almost everyone in the room blame her for the debacle of the last election that saw the PQ not only removed from power, but decimated as well.

Pauline has taken the PQ from a legitimate political force in Quebec, to a laughingstock, rejected by just about everyone except its political core, down to third place at 20% in the polls, a disaster that few could have predicted or even fathomed just two months ago.

So it's a little strange that nobody has called her out on her improbable ramblings and musing over the events of that spectacular fall, topped off by her claim in that speech in Drummondville that she had "no regrets."
Stealing a line from Edith Piaf, "Je ne regrette rien" I sat in stunned disbelief when I read the line, aghast by her incredible ability to lie straight-faced, but I guess we should be used to it.

So really.. no regrets?
All I can say is that if she has no regrets she's an idiot, and if she does, as she should, then she is a liar in saying that she has none.

The election fiasco is highlighted by the entire PQ party regretting their actions and admitting as much in public. One Pequist after another offered up their take on the errors and miscalculations that they made and voiced unabashedly the very real regrets they felt over the mistakes in the runnup and especially during the election campaign.
I bet every single member of the PQ regrets very badly....
  • calling an election when one was not necessary.
  • acting as a majority government whilst a minority.
  • refusing to compromise on the Charter of Values
  • reacting badly in the face of PKP's separatist fist salute.
  • responding to the Liberal party attacks on the referendum.....etc.etc.
  • vaunting the benefits of an independence during the campaign.
Nope, Pauline has many regrets, of that I'm sure, but offers an alternate reality, perhaps in order to ease her conscious, an exercise in self-delusion, constructed to alter reality and avoid responsibility for being the political fool.

Her delusion or dishonesty did not end with her claim that she had 'no regrets,' in an interview with LE DEVOIR she continued to blame others for the PQ meltdown, including the Globe and Mail, for publishing an unflattering photo of her and for taking a harsh stance against her and her party. Evoking the bogeyman of the big bad Anglos from Toronto, she remained unchallenged by the interviewer who never asked the obvious question as to how much an English article in a Toronto newspaper could possibly affect the outcome of the election, considering that the article was never even referred to in the French press.
" La réaction a été « virulente du côté des anglophones de Toronto », se remémore-t-elle, pointant une « photo [d’elle] grande comme ça qui n’était pas très belle à voir » à la une du Globe and Mail." Link{fr}
In that article Pauline did however reveal some truths, the fact that she was demolished by the defeat and the fact that in her mind she never considered that she and the PQ could lose the election, at worst being returned as a minority.
Calling the defeat a brutal shock, its a bit hard to accept her statement that she had no regrets.

She went on to attribute the election loss to a clever and underhanded Liberal party strategy wherein they evoked the spectre of a referendum, an unfair election ploy in her opinion, because she promised Quebecers a referendum only under 'winning conditions'.
Hmmm.
She then went on to explain that the PQ needs to better explain sovereignty, a line offered by all desperate sovereigntists, as if the PQ hasn't explained sovereignty over the last forty years. And so she parrots the latest PQ stratagem to add a ribbon and slap some lipstick on the pig that sovereignty has become.

Not everyone gave Pauline a free ride, it fell to longtime sovereigntist Josée Legault in Le Journal de Montreal to point out the surreal world that Marois paints for herself and the PQ.
I give Legault credit for remaining consistent and true to heart. She has in the past attacked Marois and the PQ throughout the Charter of Values debate, offering an alternate sovereigntist perspective, one shared by ex-PQ leaders, an opinion roundly ignored by the PQ and Marois. Those opinions should have set off alarm bells in the PQ that perhaps the party was flirting with disaster and when that disaster hit, I guess Legault had every right to gloat. Link{fr}

For those who question why Pauline and the PQ went to an election, it  wasn't just the fact that the party was doing okay in the polls, it was the fear within the party itself of being found out as frauds.

It is the same reason Jean Charest called the election in 2012 a year ahead of schedule. It was his fear that the Liberals would be later exposed as corrupt at the Charbonneau inquiry, a fear which I imagine was magnified by the inner knowledge that it was true.
Interestingly, the subsequent revelations at the commission weren't near as bad for the Liberals as they feared and the election and the defeat could be chalked up to a guilty conscious as well.

So to was the PQ mindset in calling the election, the leadership fearful that its mismanagement of the economy and the dire straights of government finances would surely sink it later on.
So like Jean Charest before her, the PQ rolled the dice with disastrous results.

Pauline leaves the PQ in shambles, discredited as incompetents, but worse, branded as liars.

In true form, Pauline in defeat and retirement reveals her true self and that of her husband.
Like a super-villain disguised as a friend, when found out, she rips her mask off in defiance, revealing her true evil inner-self.

Gone will be the shack that she has maintained in her God-forsaken riding in the boonies, a contrived symbol of her attachment to the region, as fictional as Mike Duffy pretending that he is a resident of Prince Edward Island.
No more pretending that she and her oily husband are modest, if not financially but in practice and taste.
Claude Blanchet's purchase of a shiny new red Ferrari is a not so subtle signal to Quebecers that the couple will survive just fine, no longer bound by the fiction of modesty and anxious to throw off the constraints of the fictional charade they have led during her political rise to the premiership.

Marois will perhaps go gentle into the night, but pride will preclude the quiet life. The couple will splash around their hitherto closeted money to validate their new existence, so don't be surprised to see a new 'chateau' in the near future.

One thing that Marois cannot do with her money or influence is to re-write the reality of her fall from grace and her responsibility of steering the party into uncharted and dangerous waters.

Her legacy will be of failure and greed, an ambitious and selfish politician willing to sow social discord for personal gain, a woman so obsessed with self that she was blinded to the harm she sowed.

She has nobody to blame but herself, she was warned by friend and enemy.

And so we gladly bid her adieu, the common opinion shared by both sovereigntists and federalists... good riddance! 

32 comments:

  1. FROM ED
    While I agree with Editor on Mrois's downcoming., I don't agree with his asserssment of Jean Charets. Charest is an honest man. Listenwith intnsity to his words. His annual satate of Quebec speeches were always right on with wjhat most press, (including English )reported. He kneww if there was any dirt it would be minmal and controlled. I believe he called the election because even the press was reporting he mightb gain a majority. Marois confusion and Lying didn't start after the elecction. the province including politicos was in a state f confusion Ed


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    1. Welcome back, Ed! Long time no read!

      Charest was a consummate politician - TWO-FACED! About as honest as a used car salesman at the curb.

      How can one go from being "Captain Canada" in the 1995 Referendum to «Capitaine Québec» who wouldn't change a comma of Bill 101 and allow the Quebec civil service to stop addressing the public in English where requested. He secretly collected a salary from the PLQ only to give it up when it was discovered he was getting this secret salary (and of that, how much of it did he pay back?) He's getting a tidy pension right now as I write this and he's only 55 years old. The federal shoe will drop him another tidy pension in just over 4 years from now. He'll be sitting on his ass (or not) collecting more cha-ching than over 90% of the population working full-time. If he's working, he'll be triple dipping between his salary and two pensions. Who says you don't get rich in politics? Too, I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere down the line we learn of his having gotten think envelopes full of graft! It's the Quebec way after all!

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    2. Holy Christ Ed, you are as delusional as @student.

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    3. @ed

      "Charest is an honest man."

      http://tinyurl.com/mqbs7um

      sure. an honest man who charged 500$ for businessmen to meet him. what's your definition of honesty ed?!?

      also, this fine traitor is the fourth sitting liberal mna to be visited by upaq since april 7th. http://tinyurl.com/ntedlew

      what's your point of view on this ed? better crook than separatist right? add better poor than separate. crooks don't boost an economy. they destroy it.

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  2. "... as if the PQ hasn't explained sovereignty over the last forty years."

    They haven't. Look at the clarity in the Scottish debate, there's never been anything like that here. In the beginning Levesque offered "sovereignty-association," in two stages - if the referendum passed there would be another referendum after the negotiations with Canada were done - like a union putting a new collective-bargaining agreement to its members. Since that referendum failed there has never been a clear idea of exactly what "sovereignty" is and how it differs from "independence," and how negotiations with Canada would work and how conflicts or stalemates would be resolved.

    Maybe now the PQ will put out a detailed white paper and there can finally be a clear debate. Or, perhaps more likely, things will just continue as they are until the idea of separation fades away, like the idea of a socialist Quebec is fading away.

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    1. They know that a "white paper" will do nothing but accomplish what we have wanted all along: Their total destruction. There is nothing that could be offered better than what Canada provides so we will never see a comprehensive, honest document, which people will be able to analyze. Keep them in the dark = that's what they've been doing successfully for 40 years and making big bucks doing it. Why fix what ain't broken? Look at the money these dregs are collecting from spouting off nonsense and playing make believe all this time.

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    2. They'll put out a "paper" (be it white, green, blue, beige (à la Claude Ryan) or any other colour) when pigs could fly. Ambiguity has been their biggest weapon from the get-go because discussing it and then changing their minds every five minutes (y'know, the way Pauline Pig did) would make them the idiots they actually are.

      Ever heard of the cliché it is better to be a quiet moron than to open your mouth and prove it?

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  3. As in the best of silly comedy, we see an image of Pauline standing in a wasteland of total destruction, in absolute shock. She is covered in debris and burn marks, her hair scorched and sticking straight out as white smoke rises off her. A toilet seat around her neck. The caption reads, " This didn't go quite as well as expected. Good thing I was in charge or it could have been worse ".

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    1. The whole party has proven to be nothing but liars, thieves and opportunists - it wouldn't have mattered which idiot was in charge because they are all incompetent and know absolutely nothing of how to run a province let alone a country. I hope they all die off and leave us in peace trying to cope with our daily struggles let alone putting more and more on our shoulders. Good riddance to bad rubbish as the old expression goes and watch the witch finally show just how much she has in common with the rest of us - I hope I never see the old hag again except as a mask at Halloween.

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    2. Your imagery of Pauline has made my day. I can see the scene in my mind clear as day..... all it needs is that puff of smoke as test tubes are combined for disastrous effect by the mad professor, leading to what you describe.

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  4. @Cutie003

    Oh come on. Pauline as a Halloween mask?. In separatist circles, she is the greatest thing since sliced bread. In fact she has gone beyond that. She is now TOAST.

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  5. UN GARS BIEN SYMPATHIQUE DE FRANKFORTThursday, June 12, 2014 at 6:41:00 PM EDT

    The PQ ideology will remain...
    To blackmail Canada into paying quebec more and more pogey is a provincial passion.

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    1. But Canadians in the rest of the country are onto their game now so the days of Quebec's free lunch may be numbered. It has become nothing more than a parasite. Quebec is no longer needed by the federal parties to form a majority government and many Canadians in the ROC could care less if it separates or not.

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    2. UN GARS BIEN SYMPATHIQUE DE FRANKFORTThursday, June 12, 2014 at 9:58:00 PM EDT

      @Durham:
      "But Canadians in the rest of the country are onto their game now so the days of Quebec's free lunch may be numbered."

      Really?

      Looks like Canadians are stupid, especially Ontarians as Wynne is about to get a majority government as we speak which will entitle her a 4 year mandate at the trough.
      To me that translates into another decade of gravy train living by the quebecois.
      Some things never change, mate.

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    3. It was almost like a referendum on the budget that was proposed because that's likely the budget that will now pass. The conservatives offered so little opposition, it's quite amazing.

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    4. UN GARS BIEN SYMPATHIQUE DE FRANKFORTThursday, June 12, 2014 at 10:14:00 PM EDT

      Just got this through the Toronto Sun, a comment about the Liberal majority win:
      "Interesting. I am the owner of a 20 million dollar small specialty engineering company. I travel for business. I book my rooms using Hotwire and get 150 dollar rooms for 65 dollars usually. I am very profitable. Ontario politicians stay in 500 dollar rooms and Ontario is broke. Maybe I should run Ontario."
      -------------------------
      Ontario & quebec are virtually dead.

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    5. Yo, Mr. Capitol of Kentucky: Can't argue with you on that one...sadly!

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    6. Yep, Ontario is now as brain dead as Quebec...

      Well done Ontario. Well done public
      sector unions…we have become a nation of debt, debt and more debt. A province
      bankrupting future generations and they simple don’t care. This is how greedy
      public sector (police, teachers, heath care…) people are in Ontario, in Quebec in Canada...all government, all greed, every day...

      Unions lied, lied and
      lied again and now the province will go further into debt, destroying future
      generations.

      What a
      mess.

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  6. The knives are out for JF Lisee and Bernie Drainville too. Both discredited. Lisee, the architect of the PQs flirtation with identity politics as a way to win a majority and Drainville, the key man behind the black listed Charter of PQ Values. This is definitely the low water mark for the PQ for as long as I can remember. I think the best bet for the Separatists at this point is to gather an army of like minded Pur Lainers and occupy a deer infested abandoned island in the Gulf of St Lawrence. We as a nation, from Newfoundland to Vancouver island can then have a referendum on wether or not to let the Separatists keep the island. I'd back the Yes side on that.

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  7. I can't wait to see braindrain and fake Tom Hagen get their due.such malicious and despicable pond scum they are..it can't happen soon enough.

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  8. Editor, you wrote above "Pauline leaves the PQ in shambles, discredited as incompetents, but worse, branded as liars."

    How about "rabid racists" as well?

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  9. Since I never believed that Marois really cared about sovereignty one way or the other, I think she is being honest about having no regrets.

    She was in politics for her entire life, gradually becoming more cynical and likely more corrupt the entire time.

    Since Boisclair lost she ran the party her way, throwing out the diehard seppies who didn't think like she did and couldn't be convinced to shut up.
    When PKP lifted his arm it was a surprise, but since it happened during a campaign she didn't hear any of the *negative* commentary -- only the good stuff. and let's face it, the seppies all -- to a man -- thought scoring PKP was a coup that would land them the election and the keys to a majority.

    Pauline's only regret is losing power, but even then she lost the best way possible -- at age 65 and losing her own seat.

    She gets to walk away into the sunset and enjoy spinning around town in her husband's convertible Ferrari.


    Nope. She's gone, she'll be in Florida vacationing, and she ain't going to look back.

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  10. Lets see, PQ defeated in Quebec, Mario Beaulieu more than possible next leader of Bloc, Ontario Liberals win election, separatists more determined than ever, Ontario and Quebec economy in trouble, etc, etc. My god, whats next? Rob Ford running for Ontario Conservative leader? Sir John A must be doing cartwheels in his grave.

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  11. FROM ED
    My humblest apologies: I made a positive statement. I should have known better than be open with you eternal bad mouthers.
    The election is over. For God's sake come up with something new. You have hashed the same shit over and over until even the trolls gave up and went away. I could never descend to your thinking so i have nothing more to add that would interest anyone here.
    On a different note my bone scan this morning will tell me if I have bone cancer. For now, I'm too old for chemo so I may get back or not. I'm glad you have support since you all aree with each other. A pefect support group E.

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  12. I see Ed has lost none of his charming ways since he's been ill.

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  13. More good publicity for the STM in Montreal:

    http://globalnews.ca/video/1391256/stm-employee-lashes-out-after-bus-incident

    They just don't give a damn.

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  14. A comparison of the front pages of major newspapers one day this week:

    https://www.facebook.com/InfluenceComm/photos/a.341193646645.161564.339338611645/10152102555431646/

    I should hope that if ever there were a regimental funeral held for 3 SQ police officers who were slain in the line of duty, the anglophone press would demonstrate more grace and class than was shown here this week. (Actually, I’m quite sure it would.) One exception was Le Droit in Ottawa/Gatineau.

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    1. Yes, the ROC would, once again, show that they have much more class than the separatist's newspaper rags in quebec. Just another "cultural" difference between the "civilized" and "uncivilized" - nothing new here. How disgusting is that?

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    2. It’s not a question of being “civilized” or “uncivilized” but rather one of upbringing. It’s not surprising that one often hears Acadians expressing their dismay at some franco-Quebecers’ penchant for navel-gazing (“le petit Québécois nombriliste”). They would be the ones who are always clamouring for “respect” from everybody else, while offering relatively little themselves.

      Several of the comments make light of the situation, with one explicitlying say that franco-Quebecers shouldn’t care about the funeral specifically because they were RCMP officers. And yet, law enforcement officers from across Canada and the U.S. regularly travel great distances to attend each other’s funerals for officers slain on duty. It’s a question of basic respect and solidarity with those who literally put their lives on the line to protect us. Knowing that there exist people in this province who defend this isolationist, discriminatory mentality is very disheartening.

      As Contra says, you want to make a country out of this?

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    3. @the cat

      at times rcmp violates french canadian's basic human rights. maybe that's why there is some distrust and less passionate mourning from them.

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    4. At times the RCMP violates every Canadian's basic human rights, but the question remains - how petty and self-centred can you be?

      And you have answered it.

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  15. Soon after reading the Editor's piece, I came across the following story on the Scottish independence movement. The similarities between the Marois/PQ view of Canada and the Scottish Nationalist Party's view of the United Kingdom are eerie and hilarious at the same time -- especially the SNP's insistence that Scotland would keep the pound sterling as currency, and that anyone who disputes that is a "bully" trying to stifle Scotland's destiny. It all sounds too familiar.

    http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2014/06/10/great-scot-the-madness-of-late-stage-nationalism/

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