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!
