By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Monday April 7, 2014
Election gut check for Quebec’s Pauline Marois
As invective took over the Quebec election campaign these past several days, PQ Leader Pauline Marois suddenly seemed to become more intimate with the electorate.
There she was prefacing so many sentences with the very personal “between you and me …”
It may have been just a tic, or more likely a device to soften her “Concrete Lady” image and deflate the partisan nature of the latest contretemps.
Of course it can also be seen as a last, almost intimate appeal from someone who now realizes she has rolled the dice on probably the biggest gamble of her political life, and that events may not be working out quite the way she thought.
Marois has been a constant on the Quebec political landscape for almost 35 years. First elected, while pregnant, to the National Assembly in 1981, Marois has been a prominent cabinet member in the governments of René Lévesque, Jacques Parizeau and Lucien Bouchard.
Like her or not, people here feel they know her. Quebec’s first woman finance minister, first woman party leader (on her third attempt), and first woman premier, in 2012.
Clearly, her campaign slogan — Déterminé — is more than bluster: she is indeed one determined woman.
But, now, perhaps more than ever, a weekend away from election-day Monday, Marois’s entire future is on the line.
Short of securing the majority she seemed so confident she would win just four weeks ago when she called the vote, she may well be forced to take her leave, even as early as Monday night.
If such is the case, she’ll join ranks with Alberta’s Alison Redford and Newfoundland’s Kathy Dunderdale in the new subcategory of female premiers forced to resign for losing their party’s favour. (Source: CBC News)
Other Media: Reprinted in iPolitics, The Western Star, Corner Brook NL, Whitehouse Daily Star
There are disasterous PQ leaders, and the legendary ones. I met a legend in 1986. There may never be another René: pic.twitter.com/l4Hws39hzo
— mackaycartoons (@mackaycartoons) April 8, 2014
Thankfully, Quebec can finally move forward #cdnpoli #qcpoli pic.twitter.com/J1D0gVlDZg
— mackaycartoons (@mackaycartoons) April 8, 2014