Marois and the PQ have only survived the crisis thus far because Premier Jean Charest deferred the arena vote. Photograph by: DAVE SIDAWAY THE GAZETTE, The Gazette

Poor delusional Pauline Marois. Somebody she trusts has to explain to the Parti Québécois leader that she didn't win this week, she lost. And she's been left not in a position of strength, but one of weakness.
With breathtaking arrogance, Marois on Wednesday invited the four members of the National Assembly who had quit the PQ caucus earlier this week to admit that their resignations were the result of temper tantrums and to come crawling back to seek her forgiveness.
This was after that morning's La Presse reported that 60 per cent of Quebecers (and even 53 per cent of declared PQ voters) sided with the former PQ members against Marois on her party's Quebec City arena bill, the issue that led to their resignations. What's more, the results of the CROP-La Presse Internet poll, conducted after the resignations, suggest that the arena controversy had caused the PQ to lose support to Québec solidaire, whose lone MNA, Amir Khadir, led the opposition to the PQ bill.
The PQ support had dropped below 30 per cent, while support for QS, a party whose only member is part crusader, part crackpot, had surged (uh-oh, there's that word again) to a party-record 17 per cent. Most damaging of all for Marois personally, 62 per cent of Quebecers, including 56 per cent of sovereignists, agreed that she should step down as PQ leader.
It wasn't as if there was an obviously better alternative available to replace her. The favourite among the possible replacements named in the poll was Gilles Duceppe, who appeared to be available only because the 63-year-old former Bloc Québécois leader had been defeated, along with all but four other Bloc candidates, in the May 2 federal election.
But on Wednesday, Duceppe sent a message to sovereignist blogger Jean-François Lisée that he thinks Marois should lead the PQ into the next election, and he intends to "withdraw completely from public and media life for several months." Still recovering from one train wreck caused by Smilin' Jack Layton, he didn't seem eager to risk being derailed by François Legault, or for that matter Khadir, in the next Quebec election.
The only one who does seem interested in Marois's job is - don't laugh - 74-yearold Bernard Landry, who resigned as PQ leader six years ago, has regretted it ever since and, unlike Duceppe, has not said Marois should keep it, thank you very much. OK, you can laugh, since absolutely nobody else has suggested that Gramps should come back. That is, if there's much to come back to. Also in the CROP-La Presse poll, 43 per cent of sovereignists agreed that this week's internal crisis in the PQ threatened the party's survival.
If it has survived the crisis so far, it's only because, as explained in this space on Thursday, Premier Jean Charest stepped in to save the PQ and Marois from destroying themselves, because he needs to keep them around for reasons of his own. The Quebecor newspapers have accused Charest of "abandoning" Quebec City by postponing until fall an Assembly vote on the PQ's proposal to shield an arena-management deal between Quebecor and the city from possible legal challenges. But, as Municipal Affairs Minister Laurent Lessard confirmed on Wednesday, the Liberal majority intends to pass the PQ arena bill in its present form as soon as the Assembly session resumes in September after the summer recess.
Then the PQ caucus will have to face the arena issue again. And in the free vote on it that Marois announced on Wednesday, every PQ MNA who doesn't vote for the bill will be counted as not supporting her. In the meantime, Marois is still standing as leader only because her adversary has propped her up. That's a victory? That's a position of strength?
dmacpherson@montrealgazette.com
Twitter: @MacphersonGaz