The raised fist of billionaire star candidate Pierre Karl Péladeau, awkwardly signifying revolutionary resistance and solidarity with the oppressed, was supposed to be the moment that clenched victory for Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois. Instead, it marked the moment power began to slip from her grasp.
Monday night, the PQ was handed its worst defeat in at least a generation, with the future of both the party and its raison d'être seemingly in jeopardy.
The prospect of a referendum, highly popular within the party but anathema without, derailed a winning PQ strategy based on protecting Quebec's distinct character, and it strengthened each of her opponents in different ways.
PKP, as the hereditary heir of media giant Quebecor is known, 'threw the PQ for a loop,' said Robert Young, professor of political science at Western University, mainly because his candidacy put sovereignty front and centre in the campaign, at the expense of the Charter of Values.
His candidacy 'launched them on the wrong track, or derailed them ... and they lost control of the campaign really, really early on,' said pollster Lorne Bozinoff, president of Forum Research.
From the moment of that raised fist, at the press conference introducing the union busting corporate titan as a die-hard sovereigntist who could bring economic clout to a left-wing party, it was all downhill for the PQ, 'almost like a mathematical formula,' said pollster Luc Durand, president of Ipsos Québec. 'It's a constant decline, right from that moment. It couldn't be more clear.'
As those numbers fell, the effect was to 'revive and re-energize' Liberal leader Philippe Couillard, who was able to skate over his party's most obvious vulnerabilities, mainly a history of scandal from its years in power, according to Prof. Young.
The plunging PQ poll numbers also meant centrist and right-leaning voters did not have to hold their nose and strategically vote Liberal, but could move to the Coalition Avenir Québec, whose leader François Legault came across as a 'right wing Jack Layton,' running from sugar shack to tavern, expressing a common touch, according to Alain-G. Gagnon, Canada Research Chair in Quebec and Canadian Studies at the Université du Québec à Montréal.
Even plucky left-wing Québec Solidaire benefited from the PKP factor, as Ms. Marois, having lost control of her message, responded with policy flip flops that suggested a shift to the right, proposing to cut income tax for example. For some parts of the PQ's lefty, labour-friendly base, this made the case for the more progressive message of Québec Solidaire.
'When the PQ launched into this new campaign, there was definitely a third, maybe 36%, of the electorate who were willing to support the party and give it a clearer mandate,' said Prof. Gagnon. 'The more [Ms. Marois] spoke, the more she was moving to the centre, if not the right of the political spectrum, and as a result of that, people who have traditionally supported the PQ have distanced themselves from the PQ, and moved to the Québec Solidaire option.'
A key PQ mistake, it appears, was refusing to rule out a referendum in this mandate, which kept the issue live, for the sake of preserving the dreams of the separatist hard core, at the expense of a population that is sick and tired of referendum talk.
Instead, Ms. Marois' non-committal line about having one when Quebecers are 'ready' came off as 'grooming,' or enticing them into becoming ready, Prof. Young said. 'They're suspicious of that forced or staged confrontation ... Marois was silly enough to start musing about a future sovereign Quebec, which drives people crazy, because they start thinking about passports and borders and all those things they don't want to think about.'
Until then, the ballot question had been about the Charter of Values, and the integrity of the PQ as compared to the scandal-plagued Liberals, who were blessed by the suspension of the Charbonneau corruption inquiry during the campaign.
'That's the kind of line that would have allowed her to keep coasting. But as soon as secession enters the agenda, she is caught, and you can see how desperately she was caught,' Prof. Young said.
Other moments in the campaign were similarly symbolic, including the discreet shove from Ms. Marois as Mr. Péladeau crowded her at a podium.
'That's probably the first time in his life he's ever been shoved, unless it was on a picket line,' said Patrick Smith, director of the Institute for Governance Studies at Simon Fraser University. 'It seems like they spent more time on recruitment than making sure they are on message ... That's the most stunning bit. They clearly had a plan. They had the narrative they wanted to run with, and as soon as they had the first push, they were off on somebody else. They forgot their message.'
Unseemly voter eligibility scandals and the McGill Muslim swimming pool conspiracy of PQ candidate Janette Bertrand cast the PQ's preferred charter issue in the negative light of xenophobia, and the strong performance of Mr. Legault of the CAQ in the second leader's debate sent his fortunes soaring, on a platform of no referendum and government house cleaning.
But this election came down to the spectre of another referendum, which is the one thing most Quebecers agree they do not want.
In one of her final public appearances before the vote, Ms. Marois conceded as much. 'Probably I shouldn't have answered the questions on sovereignty, considering the issue is a choice of government - a solid government - and that's what I'm offering,' she said.
But with Mr. Péladeau at her side, looking for all the world like the aspiring finance minister or even leader of a new country, the narrative was lost.
As Prof. Smith put it, citing the ancient wisdom: 'Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.' National Post * Email: jbrean@nationalpost.com | Twitter: JosephBrean
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