One day, perhaps, a political leader will step out of line, take the problem head-on. He will have the courage to tell the truth about the cancers that are eating away at our democracy: lies, cynicism, demagoguery.
Let’s try together to put words in the mouth of this dream chef. First, he would say, “My fiercest opponent is the cynicism of the people, who are no longer interested in politics. Then he would diagnose the causes. First, the lack of transparency: “Take the question period. You can ask the same questions over and over without getting an answer. And the president cannot intervene by saying: “Answer a specific question.” What an excellent suggestion: that the President of the Assembly can judge that a minister—even the prime minister—is dodging a question.
This hero of democracy would also say: “Currently, it is possible to get elected with a series of promises”, but, “Once in power, to do the opposite of your promises. You need a mechanism, perhaps an arbiter, like the Chief Electoral Officer, to hold the party in power to its promises. Otherwise, we add to the cynicism, and people vote less and less. This is, he would add, “a challenge for the entire political class”. He would put forward an idea: that, if 50% of the voters in a constituency demand it, a deputy should be removed from office and a new election should be called. Including in the Prime Minister’s constituency.
This new man would see even bigger and would target the whole structure: “I want less cynicism, more trust between citizens and the political class. It goes through a mixed proportional voting system. Yes, because “polarization harms what citizens want. [Ils] feel obliged to vote for a party which sometimes does not correspond perfectly to what they are looking for”. The road to the adoption of this major reform is certainly strewn with pitfalls, he would admit, lucid, but, he would add, “I think that in the medium or long term, it is unavoidable in all modern societies.
This man exists. He has a name: François Legault. Above all, he has a date: April 27, 2015. This is the day when he announced that his party, once in power, would adopt ten key measures to restore democracy to its former glory, overcome cynicism, restore trust. It has, as we now know, an expiry date: the 1er October 2018, when he came to power.
The leader of the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) is not the inventor of setbacks, reversals and about-faces. Broken promises litter the path of almost every one of our political figures. Circumstances sometimes forced their hand. New data have appeared which have imposed a new diagnosis. A recession has wiped out the funds needed to carry out a reform. A pandemic has crippled the state. But it happens that none of these conditions are available to the leader so that he can justify breaking his word.
With regard to the complete abandonment of the anti-cynicism offensive of the head of the CAQ, we are precisely in this scenario. Why didn’t the new Prime Minister offer to give the Speaker of the Assembly the right to tell him to answer questions? Why did he not table a bill for the dismissal of deputies? His denial of the voting system is certainly the most spectacular, the reasons given (first, the pandemic, then the fact that it only interests “a few intellectuals”) becoming more and more shabby over time.
Far from wanting to ensure fair representation of all political tendencies within the People’s Assembly, he first waged constant guerrilla warfare to try to put an end to the Parti Québécois – which had nevertheless given birth to him. politically. He then refused to allow the Conservative Party of Quebec, despite its half-million voters, to even set foot in the Parliament Building.
The only question to ask is this: when did the destroyer of cynicism become a sower of cynicism? When the Dr Did Jekyll become Mr. Hyde? Was he lying when delivering his promises or did he become a liar after becoming head of government?
However, we have the answer to this question about the third link. Since, Prime Minister, he told us last week that he could not, in good conscience, spend such a large sum — 10 billion — it is because, as an accountant and party leader, he was lying in 2018 when he promised to do the thing “at all costs”.
There is certainly no good way to operate a retreat of this magnitude without paying a political cost, but the mediocrity of the arguments put forward, the total lack of preparation of the deputies and the project’s allies, the instantaneous implausibility of the alternative solution , everything contributes to hoisting this episode to the top of the podium of political failures in our history.
Father, columnist and author, Jean-François Lisée led the PQ from 2016 to 2018. | [email protected] / blog : jflisee.org