After a surprisingly strong showing in the recent federal parliamentary election, Quebec separatists have suddenly begun fighting among themselves over strategies to win independence for the province.
The new struggle over tactics to form a Quebec state -- after defeats in two independence referendums since 1980 and the electoral loss of the separatist provincial government last year -- is emerging as the crucial issue for the Parti Quebecois as it opens a potentially bitter process to choose a new leader.
Jacques Parizeau, the former Quebec premier, began the first public challenge to current party strategy this week by calling on the party to run in the next provincial parliamentary election pledging to form a new government that would prepare for speedy independence without first holding a referendum.
In an essay published on Monday in the Montreal daily La Presse, Parizeau argued that the Parti Quebecois should try to write a provisional constitution and create a separate Quebec citizenship as soon as it retook the provincial government. Only then would a referendum be held to ratify the national constitution.
"Many sovereigntists have concluded that the game is not playable under the current conditions and that we need to find another way," wrote Parizeau, whose forces were narrowly defeated in the last separatist referendum in 1995 but who remains an influential force in the party.
The next provincial election is expected to be in three years, and the separatists believe they have a strong chance of defeating Jean Charest, the unpopular Liberal premier.
The separatist cause seemed to be strengthened during the June federal parliamentary election when the Bloc Quebecois, a close ally of the Parti Quebecois won 49 percent of the Quebec vote and 54 of 75 seats that the province holds in the House of Commons.
Bernard Landry, the former Quebec premier who is struggling to hold on to Parti Quebecois leadership after his landslide defeat last year, immediately announced his opposition to the Parizeau plan. He said a retreat from a referendum would deny a Quebec state the "legitimacy and dignity" it would need.
Landry and some other Parti Quebecois leaders have soft-peddled the separatist issue in recent elections in an effort to win moderate swing voters.
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
SCAM CLAMPDOWN: About 130 South Korean scam suspects have been sent home since October last year, and 60 more are still waiting for repatriation Dozens of South Koreans allegedly involved in online scams in Cambodia were yesterday returned to South Korea to face investigations in what was the largest group repatriation of Korean criminal suspects from abroad. The 73 South Korean suspects allegedly scammed fellow Koreans out of 48.6 billion won (US$33 million), South Korea said. Upon arrival in South Korea’s Incheon International Airport aboard a chartered plane, the suspects — 65 men and eight women — were sent to police stations. Local TV footage showed the suspects, in handcuffs and wearing masks, being escorted by police officers and boarding buses. They were among about 260 South
A former flight attendant for a Canadian airline posed as a commercial pilot and as a current flight attendant to obtain hundreds of free flights from US airlines, authorities said on Tuesday. Dallas Pokornik, 33, of Toronto, was arrested in Panama after being indicted on wire fraud charges in US federal court in Hawaii in October last year. He pleaded not guilty on Tuesday following his extradition to the US. Pokornik was a flight attendant for a Toronto-based airline from 2017 to 2019, then used fake employee identification from that carrier to obtain tickets reserved for pilots and flight attendants on three other
RSS