An online petition demanding the resignation of Jean Charest is an amusing novelty. And so it is spreading, and the number of signatures is growing, with the same "viral" speed shown by various previous amusing Internet novelties: cute kittens, funny ads, "Hail Mary" pass videos, droll examples of the Photoshopper's art, and Quebec's own "Star Wars Kid." The petition is about as meaningful as all that nonsense, too.
Quebecers should be careful what they wish for. The political landscape, from left to centre (there is no electoral right in Quebec) is not exactly studded with prominent potential successors jostling for a chance to solve our problems. Better the devil you know ...
We wonder, too, how many of those who are signing the petition bothered to vote in the last election.
All that said, however, we have some advice for those who are truly determined that Charest must go: Your petition means nothing, and would mean nothing even if everyone in Quebec were to sign it. If you really want your head of government to get lost, it's not a petition you want, it's a backbencher. A lot of them, actually.
Can you stand a paragraph of constitutional theory?: Unless you lived in Sherbrooke, you did not vote for or against Jean Charest in the last election. You voted for somebody in your own riding, to represent you. Our constitution provides that a prime minister remains in office as long as he or she has the support of the legislature -that is, as long as a majority of elected representatives want the premier to remain premier. Between elections, the leader of a majority party can't be touched by the electorate -but can be deposed overnight by his or her own caucus.
That's what happened just this month to Gordon Campbell, premier of British Columbia since 2001. His popularity in tatters after a hopelessly unpopular sales-tax reform, Campbell was forced to announce his resignation abruptly Nov. 2. He quit just hours before a meeting of his Liberal caucus, to which he was ostentatiously not invited, and which by all accounts would have produced a demand that he go. Campbell's party had been re-elected, with a majority in the Legislative Assembly, just 18 months earlier. That was in May 2009 -five months after Charest's Quebec Liberals were re-elected with their own majority in the National Assembly.
Between elections, in other words, it's the elected representatives, not the voters, who get to decide who runs our government. Those who really want Charest out need to shut down their computers and go speak to their Liberal MNAs. Almost nothing can depose a sitting MNA until the next election, but for those who earn their livings in politics, the prospect of genuine, widespread voter revolt concentrates the mind wonderfully. If enough Liberal MNAs hear enough bitter or disappointed opinions about their boss, they will be pushed to act.
However, there is still one pressing question which anyone who wants Charest out needs to answer before doing anything to dump him: If not Charest, who? Until there's a good answer to that question, signing a meaningless petition is the most anyone should do.