MONTREAL - To the strains of the guitar solo from ZZ Top’s Sharp Dressed Man, Parti Québécois delegates leaped to their feet to grab for T-shirts being tossed to them.
It was the only moment of unforced excitement during the three-day weekend meeting of the PQ’s governing national council.
The shirts, promoting the party’s new Web portal for members, were decorated with a drawing of PQ founder René Lévesque, finger pointing in an Uncle Sam pose: Uncle René wants you.
Lévesque always found the name of his party “rather presumptuous,” but he was overruled on its choice.
So Uncle René would have made a face at his current successor, Pauline Marois, calling it “le parti des Québécois” – the party of the (real?) Québécois – in her speech at the opening of the meeting.
And it’s doubtful that Lévesque, who abhorred political violence, would have approved of the admission of one particular Québécois to the meeting.
That was Rhéal Mathieu, a former member of the terrorist Front de libération du Québec convicted of manslaughter in 1967 for two bombing deaths and of arson in 2001 for firebombing coffee shops that had English signs. Mathieu had been registered in advance as an observer.
But “le parti des Québécois” might be a good campaign slogan for a party intending to run on a promise to defend Quebec against its enemies within, the linguistic and religious minorities.
Or if not that, how about “Vote PQ, get a free iPhone?”
One policy resolution adopted at the meeting promises all Quebecers “equal access” to digital resources.
How? Who knows? And who cares? Apparently not the delegates in the deciding plenary session who mechanically passed all but two of the nearly 40 proposed resolutions, most after little or no explanation or real debate.
The offer of a smartphone in every pot might have got 16- and 17-year-olds to the polls, but they won’t get the right to vote unless the PQ wins the election first.
Even then, they wouldn’t get it until after a PQ government first “strengthened” the teaching of “national history,” as well as “education in citizenship,” so that they vote the right way. This party has no shame.
And while the PQ would give them the right to choose their government, it would also take away the right of most of them to choose an English CEGEP. The PQ trusts the judgment of 17-year-olds only so far.
But then the PQ doesn’t trust any voters with too much information. It would prevent them from seeing new poll results in the 48 hours before they cast their ballots in an election or referendum.
The PQ doesn’t even trust its own leaders to hold a sovereignty referendum once they’ve comfortably settled into power. That’s why it forced Marois to accept an idea she had previously rejected: to allow voters to launch a referendum by petition.
It was the latest concession by the crumbling Concrete Lady in an attempt to survive until an election she pretends is coming too soon for her party to change leaders.
Marois said on Larocque Lapierre on LCN on Sunday that she had feared she might face a non-confidence vote at the council meeting.
But as it turned out, her referendum concession might not have been necessary.
PQ members of the National Assembly might still fear an election behind a leader so unpopular that her party is building up “the team,” its candidates, instead.
But since a timely leak eliminated Gilles Duceppe shortly before the meeting, the PQ no longer has a replacement for Marois who is popular as well as available.
So, as Marois hangs on, it’s her party that was in a mood of resignation at its anticlimactic weekend meeting.
As one previously outspoken critic of Marois told reporters, in what we may safely assume will not be the PQ election slogan, “We’ll make do with her.”
dmacpherson@montrealgazette.com
Twitter:@MacphersonGaz