Next Monday is election day in Quebec. Not in Canada, only in Quebec. We're electing a new provincial government. Think of it as electing a new governor or senator or whoever is overseeing the well-being of one state only.
Last time we did that was in September of 2012 and it didn't go so well. We kicked out a notoriously corrupt government who deliberately fostered a long and dramatic student strike to distract public opinion from the public announcement of the sale of oil-drilling rights on Anticosti Island *, one of Quebec's most beautiful wildlife reserves. A government who's main pride was the ''investment'' 80 billion dollars into creating about 20 000 jobs (4 million dollars a job) and a bubble of speculation that already died out. ** I'm glad they are not in power anymore.
It's not difficult to do better.
Yet their successor, the Parti Québécois managed to be even worse. They used the excuse of being a minority government to not take action on any pressing issue and spend their entire time preparing the following election ***. They did it in the most problematic possible way, basically waging war to Montreal, using what they call the Quebec Charter of Values as a tool for political leverage. The idea was to claim the ''defending of Quebec culture'' in order to alienate the large immigrant diaspora from the born-and-bred Québécois
Here I am, stuck in the middle of this mess. A born-and-bred Québécois, living in Montreal for a decade and with no idea who to vote for. The Fat Queen of Democracy is sitting on my shoudlers, stuffing her face, laughing and saying: ''Really, what are your options?''
Fuck, I don't know. What I know is that I don't want to elect the corrupt Liberal Party or the right-wing zealots of the Parti Québécois. I don't want the Parti Québécois dissidents of the Coallition Avenir Québec or the disconnected hippies of Québec Solidaire to get squat either. Québec has achieved its political Peter Principle. I want new ideas. I want a political party with a charismatic leader who's only goal is to get the province outside of the hole it dug itself in. A responsible, rational left-wing politician who's going to speak to everybody and govern for everybody. I want a spiritual successor to Jack Layton to take charge of Québec's future.
Whoever is reading this and has the right to vote in Québec, I invite you NOT to vote strategically. Let's have a little bit of long term vision and start draining the power away from tired, loopy and belligerent politicians. Vote for who you really want to vote for, not for whoever you don't want to see in power. More important, let's start talking to one another : anglos and francos, muslims, catholics and atheists. Let's try and figure out what we want and where we want to go together. My vision may be utopian and unrealistic, but if you don't start dreaming different, nothing different will ever happen.
If there is any inherent priviledge in being in my position, it's that I've made friends with every possible kind of people in Québec. Everybody would get along if we would stop being pawns to self-interested politicians for 5 minutes and start talking to one another.
Let's fight the power with kindness and dialogue. What do you say?
* Where my family comes from.
** It also kicked people out of their home and made the real estate market impossible for the people who wished to sale.
*** There is a rumour floating around that the budget they used to get their government overthrown at the right time contained Lorem Ipsum text.
