Quebec woke up today to an undeniable political distortion. In the aftermath of the provincial elections, the gap between the votes and the number of seats obtained by the parties in the National Assembly has not been so marked for decades.
At the end of the counting of the votes, the Coalition avenir Québec found itself with a majority of elected members, with 90 out of 125, while the party received only 41% of the popular vote.
Punctuated by the dissemination of the results and the speeches of the leaders, the election evening served as a platform for the representatives of the opposition who relaunched the debate by pointing the finger at what they consider, for the most part, to be a democratic failure. The duty gathered their words.
Paul St-Pierre Plamondon
The leader of the Parti Québécois described reform of the voting system as a “fundamental question” during the speech following his victory in Camille-Laurin on Monday evening in Boucherville.
“Is it normal for a political party that gets around 40% of the vote to win 70% of the seats? “Questioned the PQ leader, noting that his party had won 15% of the vote, but won only three seats.
“Rarely in our history have we had such a disproportion between the popular will and the results in terms of number of seats,” declared Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon. Once this election is over, absolutely nothing prevents a successful reform of the voting system, nothing prevents the CAQ from returning to its initial commitment and collaborating with all the other opposition parties so that together we succeed in this challenge of democracy. »
“PSPP” concluded on the subject by saying that it wanted “really [se] devote to this challenge.
Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois
“I have to talk to you about that,” immediately established the spokesperson for Québec Solidaire on Monday after learning of his re-election in Gouin.
“Our political system is broken, our democracy is sick and the electoral map this evening does not reflect the political will of Quebeckers,” insisted Mr. Nadeau-Dubois. It must be said. »
“This election should have been the first election where every vote counts, he also wrote on Twitter. But a calculation has been made, a promise has been broken. We must relaunch the reform of the voting system, François Legault must recognize the problem and commit to solving it. »
Eric Duhaime
If his party will not sit in the Blue Room, the Conservative leader highlighted that the Conservative Party of Quebec had obtained roughly the same number of votes as the Liberal Party of Quebec.
“We are in a way caught up with a democratic distortion of the century,” said Mr. Duhaime, citing the analysis of the To have to released last week.
He returned to this situation early Tuesday morning, in a message posted on Facebook. “Unfortunately, even if we obtain practically the same number of votes as the PLQ, we find ourselves today with 0 MP versus 21 for the Liberals, he writes. My greatest happiness: to have allowed these hundreds of thousands of center-right Quebecers to express themselves. My greatest sadness: the National Assembly will continue to suffer from an embarrassing democratic deficit. »
Dominique Anglade
Visibly happy after learning that the Liberal Party would form the official opposition, the leader re-elected in Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne did not address the issue of the representativeness of the voting system.