Thursday, May 31, 2007

Charest is not that smart (and neither am I)

This is a reprint of an article I wrote May 26 and posted in the wrong spot. I was wondering why it wasn't coming up when I was searching for it ...


So now I'm diving back into the world of political commentary on my blog. And I'm diving back into my blog. It's been a while since I've written in it, and I keep telling myself that I'll write more extensively in it. Let's see if I can keep it going this time.

On to the topic ...

Quebec Premier Jean Charest is now in a political pickle of his own making. The budget his government presented in the Quebec National Assembly this week is perhaps the boldest move he has made since becoming leader of the province. The only thing is that boldness was probably best suited to his first term. If he had been bold then, people wouldn't have reason to doubt his motives today.

Opposition Leader Mario Dumont has declared that short of excising the $950 million tax cut that is the centrepiece of the Charest budget, the Liberals should not count on the support of his party, the ADQ. And the Parti Quebecois, still reeling from the worst electoral defeat in its history, has declared the budget incompatible with its core beliefs.

Saddled with a crippled leader and financially tapped out a scant month ago, the PQ appeared to be a soft touch that would be forced to prop up the government in the short term. At least that's what the Liberals believed. But as the Toronto Star's Chantal Hebert mentioned in her May 26 column, the government made its budget decisions when Andre Boisclair was still leader of the PQ. They didn't account for Boisclair's resignation and the rise of Pauline Marois, who is now the PQ leader in all but name.

Marois is fresh from administering a swift ass-kicking to current Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe, who thought he could rally enough support to win the PQ leadership. After he beat a hasty, embarrassing retreat to Ottawa, Marois consolidated her hold on the party and, barring some unforeseen circumstance, will be sworn in officially as the leader by the end of June at the latest. Her party is riding a popular wave, leading all polls taken since the March election, and Marios is also personally popular.

In contrast, Charest is in the exact inverse situation. His party trails both opposition parties in the post-election polls, he is as personally unpopular as he has ever been, and people across the country are angry that he used increased equalization payments from the federal government, demanded for years as essential to maintain the province's social safety net, to promise a massive tax cut funded by taxpayers in the rest of the country.

His political brinksmanship in the National Assembly can only end badly for the Liberals. As has been pointed out by numerous analysts, he must either present supplementary changes to the budget to please the PQ or the ADQ, thereby losing face and appearing weak, or push the budget through to a vote as it is written, thereby risking an election he will be hard-pressed to win.

Quebeckers aren't stupid. They know Opposition resistance to the tax cut is not an attack on the middle class (as Charest is trying to spin it) but rather a stand based on what the province can afford in the here and now. There is still room for modest tax cuts in the budget coupled with debt relief and moderate reinvestment in social priorities. Charest, who probably recognized his tax-cutting budget would be dead on arrival given his minority status, could have chosen compromise. Generally speaking, that's what voters want when they refuse a majority to a governing party in the first place.

But in choosing the path of greatest resistance, Charest cannot blame Dumont and/or the PQ for his plight. He chose this strategy willingly. When it comes to the budget, it is the government and the government alone who frames the debate and sets the agenda.If an election is avoided over the budget, Charest will be forever crippled and his leadership of his party and the government will be placed on life support. If the government is defeated, a new election is all but certain (given the ADQ's probable inability to secure the confidence of the House to govern). And the only outcome of a summer election I can see at this point is a massive Liberal defeat, consolidation of ADQ support, and a government led by Marois, who would quickly be sworn in as PQ party leader in the event of a Charest non-confidence vote, or Dumont, whose party didn't even have official status in the National Assembly four months ago.

Charest's political career is in its death throes. His demise is Dumont's gain. Marois may finally grasp the brass ring. And the Liberal Party, decimated, relegated to third-party status in much of francophone Quebec as well as in the National Assembly, may be the next provincial party in Quebec's history to die an ignoble death, following the path blazed by the Conservative Party, the Union Nationale and the Creditistes.