The story is well known: after having defended tooth and nail the idea of a highway tunnel between Quebec and Lévis, after having sworn that nothing — and especially not science! — would hinder the fulfillment of this absurd promise, the CAQ of François Legault pitifully abandoned one of its key commitments, defeated by the evidence. Barely a few months after an election campaign where the promise had been repeated ad nauseam by all the candidates, the CAQ decision could only arouse indignation, even in the ranks of the fiercest opponents of the project: the return to common sense covered all appearances of political maneuvering.
To put it modestly: in these circumstances, the late unveiling of the results of traffic studies seems to stem no longer from procrastination, nor from simple electoral strategy, but rather from political ruse. We also learned, on May 4, that the possibility of a link reserved solely for public transit was being studied as of June 2022. Therefore, the Prime Minister’s unshakable profession of faith appears overplayed at best, misleading at worst. .
To say this is not to debase politics; it is to take it as it is. The lesson is old: the Commentariolum petionisthis fascinating campaign manual attributed to Quintus Cicero and written for his brother, Cicero, the famous orator, expresses it with absolute clarity and disarming frankness.
In this booklet, Quintus delivers a summary of all the electoral maneuvers to which a candidate must consent if he wishes to reach the consulate, a prestigious magistracy which constitutes one of the peaks of the career of honors under the Roman Republic.
Written in 64 BC. J.-C., the manual could be the work of one of our political advisers or specialists in modern communication so much the things changed little, of the campaign of smearing with the walkabouts. “The intrigue of the magistracies”, explains Quintus, “comprises two kinds of activity: one consists in ensuring the devotion of its friends, the other in ensuring the favors of the people”. Let’s move on to the first, quite comparable to those dense networks of relationships that our politicians weave in order to finance and support their campaigns, made up of a thick web of favors received, returned or to be returned, with which even the most honest politicians soon find themselves or later prisoners.
Let us rather dwell on the conquest of popular favor — we would say: of the electorate — which requires “that we know the voters by name, that we know how to flatter them, that we are assiduous, that one is generous, one excites public opinion, one awakens political hopes”.
At a time and in a province where the almost transactional “promises” of Roman senators and magistrates, quite well summed up by the famous expression of Juvenal – “bread and games”! —, would not be out of place, here is the shadow of this third link so belatedly denied, local hope skilfully maintained, become an object of polarization within a skilfully spurred opinion.
“Men”, wrote Quintus Cicero, “do not only want to be made promises […], they still want us to do them generously and in terms that honor them”. What was this tunnel, in fact, if not an expensive flattery intended to fill up the votes in a key electoral region, which likes to paint itself (because it is encouraged to do so with the backing of rowdy chronicles and vengeful radio shows) eternally neglected against a largely fantasized rival metropolis—Montreal?
A politician in the campaign must promise to be elected: to put it in the words of the Commentariolum petionis, “we like a lie better than a refusal”. Political activity, especially electoral activity, can unfortunately be reduced to a brutal actuarial calculation, to an assessment of risk. “This risk”, Quintus tells us, “if we make a promise, is uncertain, remote”. On the other hand, to ignore a request, not to promise, is to make “enemies for sure, and on the spot, and in greater numbers.”
The operation is basely down to earth: as “one is much more irritated against those who refuse than against a man whom one sees prevented”, one will promise now to give up later. All you have to do is find an impossibility, a pretext: the pandemic, the reduction in road traffic, the predictable results of a long-delayed study. It is not then to show proof of courage to abandon the promised project: it is to carry out the strategy to its term, to play the political game.
It happens, however, that we play badly, that the calculation is too coarse, too obvious, and that loses the one who thought he was the winner. Anyone who has studied public opinion knows that politics is also a matter of feelings and that disappointments, like grudges, can be tenacious.