Recent politics in two deceptive photos

In politics, images are often misleading. Let us take two recent cases: the feminist and progressive postcard of the results of the very recent municipal elections, all dapper with novelty and coolness, and the image of the leader of the Parti Québécois, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, reluctant to run in the riding of Marie-Victorin. Winners and a loser, really ?

Pause.

Impossible not to be delighted with the result of the municipal elections. A fresh wind has blown across Quebec, with a record number of elected women, a few representatives of the First Nations, and, perhaps more decisive in the long term, a whole new generation at the helm. It is the representation of a younger, more equal Quebec, concerned with new and powerful issues such as that of the environment.

The group photo speaks volumes. It instantly out-dated the prototype of the fifty-year-old municipal elected official, a bit focused on scheming with local real estate developers, which was still the current model in the previous election. We spontaneously say to ourselves: here is a big step, a call for air that will have repercussions beyond the municipal one; on political life in general, inspiring new candidates at all levels of governance.

But the bright colors in the photo shouldn’t blind us.

Let us recall that barely 37% of the Quebec population went to vote in these crucial elections, the municipal being the order of government where the behind of the elected is closest to the foot of the citizen, and that half of vacancies were filled by acclamation.

This should moderate the great enthusiasm for a vision of an idealized new policy. We will also be tempted to avoid a little embarrassment when superimposing the provincial electoral map on the municipal map. All the projections of the polls for next year’s general election indicate that Quebec will be painted with a thick coat of pale blue paint, with a few red and orange spots here and there, and that even a few ridings of the impregnable 514 would pass to the CAQ.

If so, it poses a significant problem of cognitive dissonance. How can the same voter be so “progressive” at the municipal level and so “conservative” at the national level? How would such a result indicative of change at the local level turn into a vote on the right at the provincial level? Is there a fracture at this point? Is the voter bipolar? Is the CAQ more ready than we imagine to open up to more progressive issues? Would young mayors be more conservative than they have generally been portrayed in the media? Beautiful questions that show that everything is not black or white and that the answers are surely in the nuances. Youth, like women, do not miraculously change politics, but quietly lead it to change. Because beyond dazzling personalities, politics is and will remain a heavy system, with laborious change …

The second photo is provided to us by the Prime Minister and certain commentators, who see in the reluctance of Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, leader of the Parti Québécois, to stand in the riding of Marie-Victorin a sign of weakness. We enlarge the lines, we insist… We can also read in this pressure a beautiful display of bullying Politics. Everyone knows that the CAQ is a few votes away from taking back the seat.

The elections are in less than a year, Plamondon and his family live in the Quebec City region, in short, to run would be to rush into a stupid trap. The photo is therefore deceptive, sketching the contours of a leader with weak leadership rather than those of a sincere politician who avoids the trap and thinks about the future.

We like extreme simplifications, just as we would like political life to improve on a constant and rapid upward curve. We love to describe phenomena in an unequivocal way, to portray politicians in a strong way. However, things are more complex. Quebec, like many democracies, is fractured on all sides. The best meets the most disappointing. People and ideas do not advance at equal or constant speed, sometimes we go back to bounce back better, or progress is less spectacular than it seems. Let us be careful not to assess the health of our democratic life, and that of women and men who give the best of themselves in overly simplistic terms.

A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. It would be a shame to summarize them in two: revolutionary and fearful. Our collective intelligence is capable of more …

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