Parti Québécois family feuding

QUEBEC РWith polls showing the Parti Qu̩b̩cois, led by Pauline Marois, would win an election if one was called now, the leadership of Marois is under attack, within PQ ranks.

Jacques Parizeau, the PQ patriarch, praised the "remarkable clarity" of Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe this week, to the delight of Premier Jean Charest.

Then Le Devoir reported an anonymous letter, circulating in PQ ranks, rating Duceppe as "the most inspiring sovereignist leader."

Marois has been hammering Charest in National Assembly question period over his refusal to call a public inquiry into allegations of corruption and Mafia control in the construction industry.

So Charest leapt on the PQ dissension to say that Marois is "more and more isolated."

On Friday, Marois met with Duceppe at her Montreal office in Place Ville-Marie. An aide to Marois said the meeting was planned three weeks ago and is one in a series of get-togethers by the PQ and Bloc leaders.

"They work closely together," said Marie Barrette, Marois’s press secretary.

In Quebec City, Agnès Maltais, the PQ health critic, quizzed by reporters on the leadership issue, said she knows caucus dissension and the current PQ caucus is younger and united.

"Madame Marois has passed all the tests," Maltais said.

"With a 25-per-cent lead among francophones, give me an election tomorrow morning and you will have a government and we will be on our way to a country," she added.

Parizeau is critical of changes in the PQ program, to be adopted next April, that will remove any reference to a timetable for a third referendum on sovereignty, and thinks instead that a new PQ government should start gearing up for a new referendum right away.

Bernard Landry, like Parizeau another former PQ premier, also objects to Marois’s plan to drop the commitment, written into the program by Landry, calling for an referendum "as soon as possible."

Marois says she will "keep the door open" and hopes to be able to call a referendum, when she thinks she can win, in her first term as premier.

Lise Payette, a PQ minister in the government of René Lévesque, suggested in Le Devoir Friday that the former PQ leaders are spooked at the prospect Marois, a woman, may succeed where they failed.