The Parti Québécois (PQ) celebrated the memory of René Lévesque with the family on Wednesday evening, on the occasion of his 100e birthday, an opportunity for the current leader of the party, Paul St-Pierre-Plamondon, to reiterate that he was “independence” and “PQ”.
Posted at 9:44 p.m.
The event brought together more than a hundred activists in a golf club in Longueuil, in the riding of Taillon, which René Lévesque represented, from 1976 and 1985.
Paul St-Pierre-Plamondon, revealed that he had “a lot insisted” that his party organize this evening on the sidelines of another commemoration in memory of the founder of the PQ, this one in downtown Montreal, organized by the René Lévesque Foundation.
“It’s difficult to emphasize in the public space that he was a separatist,” said the PQ leader. ” [Mais] tonight, I also wanted people to say that René Lévesque was a PQ member,” a word “often used with inexplicable contempt in Quebec,” he continued.
During the launch of the “Lévesque year”, a series of activities in honor of the former Prime Minister, last June, Paul St-Pierre-Plammondon had already denounced the evacuation of the sovereigntist project of the commemorations in a barely veiled reproach to the leader of the Coalition avenir Québec, François Legault.
As the next election approaches, Wednesday’s resolutely political evening will also have made it possible to present to activists the PQ candidates from the South Shore of Montreal: Suzanne Gagnon in La Pinière, Soledad Orihuela-Bouchard in Laporte, Adam Wrzesien in Vachon, Pierre Nantel in Marie-Victorin, Daniel Michelin in Montarville and Andrée-Anne Bouvette Turcot in Taillon.
“He never reneged on his commitment”
Present at the event, former Prime Minister Pauline Marois clarified that she had chosen to be there despite the many other invitations she had received for this evening of August 24, 2022, date of the 100e birthday of René Lévesque.
Although she refuses to see her presence at this evening as a disavowal of other events, the one who has held the positions of Minister for the Status of Women and Minister of Manpower and Income Security in the Lévesque government considers it important to recall its political orientations.
“He never reneged on his commitment, until the end of his life, he always defended Quebec’s sovereignty project. We cannot make him say what he would not say today, but we can say, yes, that he was a sovereigntist and a PQ, ”she explained.