Québec solidaire honors Yves Michaud after claiming responsibility for Gérald Godin. The Legault government does the same with Camille Laurin; and donates $10 million to the René-Lévesque Foundation to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of the founder of the Parti Québécois.
For the current PQ, it is too much. An operation of “political appropriation” is underway, according to him.
Last Thursday, Pascal Bérubé, in the chamber, castigated Simon Jolin-Barrette, CAQ parliamentary leader. His fault: having prevented parliamentarians from speaking on a motion honoring Laurin.
In doing so, the CAQ would have “confiscated the right” of Laurin’s “political family” to “pay tribute to him, if only for two minutes.” This is unacceptable, and it hurt us a lot.”
Bérubé railed, without notes, against the “political appropriation” of which his political formation would be the victim: “Know that each time I have to make these reminders, I will do it, and some will realize it at their expense”, he launched, swinging between threat and despair.
skinned
We can understand the anger of the member for Matane, hyperactive these days, precisely because he feels hot soup for his party which continues to smash the floors of support in the polls.
Recent tributes – especially those from the CAQ – have generally taken place in the absence of a PQ representative and have almost always ignored Laurin’s membership in the PQ and, above all, his fierce fight for independence. Nowadays, “Dr. Laurin” would obviously not be a caquist. Recall that he resigned in 1984 with Jacques Parizeau, among other things to protest against Lévesque’s “putting under a bushel” of the sovereignist project.
Basically, the PQ of Paul St-Pierre Plamondon feels dispossessed, even dismembered. As if scavengers were already tearing themselves away, while he is still alive, some of his most beautiful pieces.
Reached yesterday morning to discuss the Michaud case (a great PQ activist and friend of Lévesque), Pascal Bérubé seemed divided. CAQ MP Ruba Ghazal presented the aging man (he is 92) with the National Assembly medal on Sunday. “I’m glad she did that,” he said at first (but sounding sorry he hadn’t thought of it himself).
Then he added: “But while Godin and Laurin were campaigning for the Yes in 1980, the founder of Québec solidaire [Françoise David] was campaigning with In fight for the No… in the name of the “pan-Canadian proletariat”! »
Feeling victim of appropriation is acrimonious, of course. It is difficult, if not impossible, for political parties, these machines to claim the paternity of such and such an idea, to admit that some of their legacies to society are so widely accepted that they come to belong to everyone.
For some in the “new parties”, this would be a sign that the party in question has had its day. And here they are quoting René Lévesque himself, who once wrote that parties “generally age quite badly.” Even from their birth, they should include in their statutes “a clause providing that it will disappear after a certain time. A generation? Hardly more.”
Nothing to appease the “dispossessed”.
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