QUEBEC — The front-running Pierre Karl Péladeau moved even closer Wednesday to becoming Parti Québécois leader when one of his biggest rivals pulled out of the race and lined up squarely behind the business mogul.
Bernard Drainville, realizing that his chances of succeeding Pauline Marois had all but vanished, confirmed the switch at a news conference in which he referred to Péladeau several times as a team player.
“Those who know me know I always play to win.”
“I said from the very beginning that I was in the race to win,” said Drainville, perhaps best known in English Canada as the architect of the PQ’s doomed values charter.
“You have to face facts.”
“I gave everything I had and my team gave everything they had. But you have to face facts. In the last few weeks, the vote crystallized and Pierre Karl has managed to forge a clear majority.
“Knowing that, it would make no sense to continue. Because, to keep going, I would have had to mount a hard campaign, very hard, too hard. And you can’t be too egotistical in something like this. You have to think of the team, you have to think of our party and you have to think of our cause.”
“You can’t be too egotistical in something like this.”
Drainville, 51, said he and Péladeau discussed several issues in meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday, including the ever-thorny independence question.
He said they agreed to consult PQ members at least six months before the September 2018 election to ask them about the party’s approach to sovereignty and about whether there should be an independence referendum in the first mandate of a PQ government.
“So members will have a say in that decision and Pierre Karl agrees with that,” Drainville added.
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His withdrawal leaves three other leadership candidates besides Péladeau: ex-cabinet ministers Alexandre Cloutier and Martine Ouellet and Pierre Cere, a spokesperson for a group that represents the unemployed.
Drainville had been quite vocal as of late in his criticism of Péladeau but recent opinion polls have put him in third place behind Quebecor’s controlling shareholder and the second-placed Cloutier.
The winner will be chosen May 15.
If none of the candidates gets 50 per cent of the vote plus one, a second ballot will be held, with the leader announced May 22.
Ouellet held a news conference shortly after Drainville’s and made it clear she will battle on.
“The race continues and it is far from over,” she said.
“We think there will definitely be a second ballot. There are a lot of undecided party members but I think that indicates there will be a second round.”
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