Jean-François Lisée laments, in his latest column, about Emmanuel Macron’s lack of interest in the Quebec sovereignist cause.
However, we are no longer in the era of General de Gaulle, who, whatever one thinks of his conservative side, had a sense of the State, an intellectual scope, a vision, a coherent political thought, a certain sense honor and, above all, a great love for France and Quebec.
By contrast, Macron is undoubtedly the most hated and contested president of the Ve Republic, the one which will have faced the greatest number of political and social crises (the Benalla affair, the Yellow Vests, two movements against pension reform, the farmers’ revolt, riots in the suburbs, the meteoric rise of the RN ) because of his contempt for the people, his authoritarianism, his incredible duplicity.
Imagine: forming a “republican front” with the “extreme left” (the New Popular Front) on 2e turn of the French legislative elections in order to block the “extreme right” (the National Rally) and then collude with the “extreme right” to prevent the “extreme left” from forming the government. It has to be done!
Macron obviously has little to care about the French people or democracy. So, now imagine what he has to say about the aspirations of part of the province of Quebec. We are dealing with a cold and narcissistic technocrat, a professional smoker, an expert in empty speeches, gifted with Newspeak, who only cares about power, worldliness and the oligarchy that placed him in power. . Which, basically, forms only one coherent whole. As the French cousins would say, everything went to hell.
As for Mr. Lisée, who excels in the art of creating controversies, he sees big for Quebec, which is fair game for a separatist, but, as he himself says, the Quebec national question does not is obviously not at the center of concerns in Paris; it is not even in Quebec. At least not yet.
Imagine: four PQ deputies wanting to achieve independence for Quebec by 2030. We’re coming a long way. The “field of ruins”, according to Parizeau, has barely been cleared and everything has to be rebuilt. Quebec separatists have work to do before being taken seriously in the chancelleries.