Already the mother of a 14-month-old little boy, MP Marwah Rizqy is pregnant. If she hadn’t chosen to focus on her family right now, the politician would be running for the Liberal leadership. The elected official is not closing the door to running for the leadership of her party when her children are older.
Watch the interview that Marwah Rizqy gave to LCN in main video.
Luck smiled on him for a second time. Fertility treatments have worked again for the MP for Saint-Laurent, whose delivery is scheduled for the end of June. “We’re expecting a second baby!” she exclaims with a smile, in an interview with our Parliamentary Office.
The politician makes no secret of it: resorting to in vitro fertilization to conceive a child is taxing, both physically and psychologically. Failures are painful. “It’s a little mental marathon,” she illustrates. When it doesn’t work, you can’t cry for too long because your next treatment comes quickly.
Stevens LeBlanc/JOURNAL DE QUEBEC
In a relationship with Liberal MP Gregory Kelley, Marwah Rizqy recognizes that political-family reconciliation is also quite a challenge. Having neither right to parental leave, the two elected officials often had to drag little Gabriel from Montreal to Quebec and take turns to sit in Parliament, whether in the Blue Room or for long hours in parliamentary committees. “When we finished last June, I was really exhausted,” she recalls.
Of course, the brand new daycare at the National Assembly, open since the fall, is of great help with young children. The Liberal does not want to be judge and party in this debate, but she nevertheless questions the absence of parental leave for provincial deputies, while municipal and federal elected officials are entitled to it.
Especially when she is in her constituency, Marwah Rizqy has had to learn to say no and impose shorter working days. No more activities that end at eleven o’clock or midnight. From now on, she warns the organizers that she must leave to be at her little one’s bedside before he falls into Morpheus’s arms.
Constant pressure for the chiefdom
And even if she has already announced her colors regarding the PLQ leadership race, which will take place without her in 2025, Marwah Rizqy is still under pressure. When they are not columnists, people hang on to him in the street to encourage him to embark on the adventure.
“It always makes me smile a little bit when people say to me: “We’re going to keep your child!” The goal is not to keep him, it’s to educate him! And that’s my role!”
Photo Pierre-Paul Poulin
She decided to focus on her family in the short term, but the politician admits to having been tempted by the Liberal leadership. If it weren’t for the pregnancy and little Gabriel, she would be in the running to succeed Dominique Anglade.
“I love my party, and I am not disembodied from my party. I see the situation, like everyone else and I too just want to get things back on track… and I like challenges, so spontaneously, if someone asks me the question, it’s sure that the answer , It’s a yes! I felt ready.”
The PLQ will not disappear
At the start of her first term, she didn’t even think she would have children. His meeting with Gregory Kelley changed the trajectory of his life. She is also incapable of projecting herself into the very long-term future. The 38-year-old takes on one political mandate at a time.
For the next few years, these children will still be too small. But it does not close the door to running for the Liberal throne when they are older. “If I always have something relevant to contribute,” she specifies.
And despite the bad polls, she is firmly convinced of one thing: “The PLQ will not disappear.”