Dominique Anglade would do well to consult former Liberal leader Daniel Johnson. He had an experience similar to the one she will have over the next few months.
Posted October 9
Like Mme Anglade, Daniel Johnson was not unworthy. Although he had taken over the leadership of the Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ) when a whole generation of party stalwarts had left the latter, he only lost universal suffrage by 14,000 votes in the 1994 elections. which resulted in the victory of Jacques Parizeau’s Parti Québécois.
But a defeat is a defeat. And the Liberals have never really tolerated keeping a loser as their leader. They showed the door to leaders like Jean Lesage or Claude Ryan, even when the latter tried to hang on.
PHOTO ROBERT NADON, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Daniel Johnson in 1994, with Thomas Mulcair
Daniel Johnson too had tried to stay. He had been the leader of the “No” camp in the 1995 referendum, but he had not been the hero of the “No” campaign. Rather, it was Jean Charest, then Conservative leader in Ottawa, who had been the most eloquent defender of federalism. He was going to become his successor, but we did not know it yet.
With the arrival of a Lucien Bouchard at the height of his popularity at the head of the Parti Québécois (PQ), the Liberals feared above all a new referendum and feared that Johnson would not be up to the task against his sovereignist adversary.
Daniel Johnson fought for his position and, at the March 1997 convention, with a vote of confidence like the one Mme Anglade will have to submit to the next congress of the PLQ, it had been confirmed by a vote of 80%. A score all the more remarkable that, a few months earlier, the PQ had given only 76% to Lucien Bouchard!
Despite everything, the discontent within his party has not calmed down.
It was like a long ordeal with penknife blows. No big knife to decide the question. Just, every day and on all subjects, repeated little blows that will eventually wear him out.
In March 1998, months before the election, Johnson eventually resigned.
Veteran journalist Gilles Lesage then wrote in The duty : “Is it surprising that Daniel Johnson is resigning? No: the blows rained down so hard, from all sides, that even the toughest shell ended up being shaken. »
Obviously, it is not said that history will repeat itself. Mme Anglade was elected chief by acclamation two years ago. The Liberals themselves would be very annoyed if they were asked to draw up a list of potential successors.
But to keep his job, Mr.me Anglade will have to be faultless as leader of the opposition. And, to tell the truth, it started badly.
First, there’s the denial that marked the first caucus meeting this week. Mme Anglade says the Liberals are “not sticking their heads in the sand,” but she believes “organizational issues” are responsible for the loss.
It is true that the organization is to be rebuilt at the PLQ, but Mme Anglade had been the chef for two years and it was she who had the first responsibility.
It was also she who carried a platform far removed from the concerns of voters. Green hydrogen may be the way of the future, but voters were more head over heels for today’s fuel price inflation.
And everyone saw the quirkiest tour of the chef as she spent her first week in the Quebec City area — where most of her contestants finished fifth. And this last day of the campaign, where she walked from the Magdalen Islands to Ungava, without setting foot where her party would have had a chance of winning.
It will also be necessary for M.me Anglade shows she has sound judgment. However, refusing its consent that Québec solidaire and the Parti Québécois be recognized as parliamentary groups is blind partisanship that demonstrates everything except the necessary discernment.
First, because the National Assembly has always found a way to fully involve in its work all the parliamentary groups whose results had been below the expected thresholds.
Even the Equality Party – these four deputies resulting from the anger of the Anglophone community against the PLQ in 1989 – had received partial recognition, research budgets and access to parliamentary committees.
Today, the two parties that Mme Anglade would like to exclude for strictly partisan reasons obtained more votes than the PLQ, which makes his demand to strictly apply the rules even more incomprehensible.
Especially since, in a parliament, you never know when you might need a return from the democratic elevator.