Pauline Marois

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Pauline Marois (2013)

Pauline Marois ([ pɔlin maʁwa ]; born March 29, 1949 in Québec ) is a Canadian politician ( Parti Québécois ). She was Prime Minister of the Province of Québec from September 19, 2012 to April 23, 2014 . From 1981 and 1985, and from 1995 and 2003, she held several provincial ministerial posts (including finance, education and health). From 2007 she officiated as opposition leader. In the elections on September 4, 2012, she led the Québécois Party to an election victory and then headed a minority government. After only 19 months in office, she called early elections and hoped for an absolute majority. The Parti Québécois achieved one of their worst results ever and Marois lost her seat in the National Assembly of Québec , whereupon she resigned as party leader.

biography

Youth, studies and work

Pauline Marois was born in Québec City, the eldest of five children of the mechanic Grégoire Marois and the teacher Marie-Paule Gingras. She spent her childhood in the village of Saint-Étienne-de-Lauzon , now a district of Lévis . She graduated from the Collège Jésus-Marie in Sillery . From 1968 to 1971, she studied social work at the Université de Laval . During this time she took part in demonstrations against the Vietnam War several times . In 1969 she married Claude Blanchet, who later became chairman of the Société générale de financement . She also worked for a consumer protection organization.

The October crisis in 1970 led Marois to join the separatist and social democratic Parti Québécois . She continued her studies at the École des hautes études commerciales (HEC) in Montreal , where she received an MBA in 1976 . One of her professors was the then Finance Minister and later Prime Minister Jacques Parizeau , for whom she temporarily worked as press spokeswoman. Marois mainly worked for several social institutions until she was finally appointed Chief of Staff by Minister for Women Lise Payette in November 1979 , although at that time she was not particularly feminist , unlike her superiors .

First part of the political career

Her husband and Prime Minister René Lévesque convinced Marois to pursue a political career. She ran for a seat in the National Assembly of Québec in the La Peltrie constituency and won on April 13, 1981 by a large margin. Just eleven days later, she gave birth to the second of four children. Lévesque immediately appointed her minister for women. She held this office from April 1981 to November 1983. From September 1982 she was Vice President of the Treasury. After a cabinet reshuffle in November 1983, she became Minister for Labor and Income Security. After René Lévesque had announced his imminent resignation in June 1985, Marois ran for his successor as party leader despite poor poll results. In the election carried out among all party members, she came in second place behind the clear winner Pierre Marc Johnson with 19.7% of the vote .

The Parti Québécois suffered a heavy defeat in the parliamentary elections on December 2, 1985. Marois himself was subject to the liberal rival Lawrence Cannon in her constituency of La Peltrie . She then worked as treasurer of the feminist organization Fédération des femmes du Québe . Due to directional battles, she temporarily withdrew from the party leadership in June 1987 and taught at the branch of the Université du Québec in Hull . From February 1988, under the new chairman Jacques Parizeau, she was involved in drawing up a new party program. In June 1988 she ran for a by-election in the Anjou constituency, but was narrowly defeated.

Versatile minister

In the elections on September 25, 1989, Marois ran in the constituency of Taillon, which includes part of the city of Longueuil , and moved back to the National Assembly. Five years later, the Parti Québécois was able to win the elections again and set up the government. Jacques Parizeau appointed Marois family minister and president of the treasury on September 26, 1994. On November 3, 1995, four days after the narrowly failed independence referendum , she took over the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Taxation. The new Prime Minister Lucien Bouchard reshuffled his cabinet on January 29, 1996. He appointed Marois as Minister of Education. From December 4, 1996 she was also Minister for Family Affairs.

Marois' most important achievements include the introduction of state-run day nurseries (in addition to the already existing private ones) and a reform of the school supervisory authorities, which were no longer denominationally separated, but were organized according to linguistic criteria. After the December 1998 elections, she remained Family Minister, but gave up the Ministry of Education and took over the Ministry of Health instead. When the next Prime Minister Bernard Landry took office in March 2001, there was another cabinet reshuffle. Marois rose to be his deputy. She gave up her previous ministerial posts and instead became Minister of Finance and Research and Science. From January to September 2002 she was temporarily Minister for Trade and Industry. The Parti Québécois lost the elections on April 14, 2003 and had to be content with the role of the opposition.

Opposition politician

Pauline Marois (2009)

Soon after the lost elections, Marois sought to take over the party leadership and began to build a group of supporters. In the shadow cabinet , she was the official spokesperson on education and international relations. In June 2005, Landry surprisingly announced his resignation, whereupon Marois immediately submitted her candidacy. In the election for the party chairmanship on November 30, 2005, she came in second place with 30.6% of the vote like twenty years earlier, but had to admit defeat to André Boisclair . Four months later, on March 20, 2006, she resigned as a member of parliament.

In the parliamentary elections in March 2007, the Parti Québécois fell back to third place, behind the Parti libéral du Québec and the Action démocratique du Québec . Because of this poor election result, Boisclair resigned. Marois decided to resume her political career and received enough support for an official candidacy for party leadership. When Gilles Duceppe withdrew his own candidacy and no one else wanted to make himself available, Marois was elected as the new chairman on June 26, 2007 by acclamation . With the clear victory in a by-election on September 24, 2007 in the constituency of Charlevoix, she moved back into the National Assembly.

The parliamentary elections in December 2008 ended with an absolute majority for the Liberals, while the Parti Québécois was again the second strongest force. On January 13, 2009, Marois officially became the first woman to assume the role of leader of the opposition. In Parliament, she campaigned in particular to strengthen the French language and proposed various measures to restrict English in public. Individual media outside Québec accused her of being racist towards Anglo Canadians and Muslims.

Prime minister

Pauline Marois at an election campaign event (2012)

The parliamentary elections on September 4, 2012 ended with a victory for the Québécois Party, making Marois the first woman Prime Minister of the province. While she was giving her victory speech at the Métropolis concert hall in Montreal, a masked man armed with a semi-automatic rifle broke into the hall, shot a technician and seriously injured another. Security forces brought Marois backstage to safety. The assassin tried to set fire to the building and was arrested shortly afterwards.

With 54 of 125 seats, the Parti Québecois did not have the desired absolute majority. Marois formed a minority government on September 19, 2012, which relied on the support of the Liberals and the conservative Avenir Québec coalition . As a first measure, it reversed the increase in tuition fees decided by the previous government, which had led to month-long student protests . In September 2013, she announced a bill to introduce a “Charter of Values”. Intense controversy was primarily caused by the planned regulation that public service employees were not allowed to wear any conspicuous religious symbols (e.g. kippas , turbans , hijabs , niqabs , large crosses) or cover their faces. The charter met with rejection from opposition parties, representatives of religious minorities and human rights organizations.

As the polls looked favorable, Marois asked Lieutenant Governor Pierre Duchesne on March 5, 2014 for the dissolution of parliament. With these early elections, she aimed for an absolute majority. However, approval for the ruling party quickly fell when Pierre Karl Péladeau , President and CEO of the Quebecor media group , was presented as the star candidate. Péladeau's conservative economic policy and his anti-union stance met with little enthusiasm in the social democratic party base. His outspoken support for a third independence referendum pushed all other campaign issues into the background. Many moderate voters who did not want the sovereignty debate of earlier years to flare up again turned away. The elections on April 7, 2014 ended with the Parti Québécois' worst result since 1970. Marois herself lost in her constituency, believed to be safe, Charlevoix – Côte-de-Beaupré and resigned as party leader. She continued the official business until April 23.

literature

Web links

Commons : Pauline Marois  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Marois, Graveline: Québécoise! Pp. 11-13.
  2. ↑ Marois, Graveline: Québécoise! P. 23.
  3. ↑ Marois, Graveline: Québécoise! P. 28.
  4. ^ Pierre Godin, René Lévesque : L'espoir et le chagrin (1976-1980) . Boréal, Montreal 2001, ISBN 2-7646-0105-0 , pp. 530-531 .
  5. ^ Pierre Godin, René Lévesque: L'homme brisé (1980-1987) . Boréal, Montreal 2005, ISBN 2-7646-0424-6 , pp. 117 .
  6. ↑ Katia Gagnon: Pauline en cinq temps. La Presse, May 19, 2007, p. A2.
  7. ^ Élection de Pierre-Marc Johnson au poste de chef du Parti Québécois. Université de Sherbrooke, accessed September 26, 2012 (French).
  8. ^ Pierre Duchesne , Jacques Parizeau : Le Régent, 1985-1995 . Québec Amérique, Montreal 2004, ISBN 2-7644-0280-5 , pp. 47 .
  9. ^ Duchesne, Parizeau: Le Régent. Pp. 84-86.
  10. ^ Changement de garde au PQ. Radio Canada, November 15, 2005, accessed September 26, 2012 (French).
  11. ^ Pauline Marois démissionne. Radio-Canada, March 20, 2006, accessed September 26, 2012 (French).
  12. ^ Pauline Marois: c'est officiel. Radio Canada, June 26, 2007, accessed September 26, 2012 (French).
  13. ↑ PQ leader wins byelection in decisive victory. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, September 24, 2007; accessed September 26, 2012 .
  14. ^ It's racism - in any language. (No longer available online.) National Post, October 25, 2007, archived from the original on July 28, 2013 ; accessed on September 26, 2012 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.canada.com
  15. ^ Assassination at the height of the election party. Tages-Anzeiger, September 5, 2012, accessed September 26, 2012 .
  16. ↑ Marois scraps tuition fee hikes first day on the job. The Globe and Mail, September 20, 2012, accessed September 26, 2012 .
  17. ^ Charter of Quebec values ​​would ban religious symbols for public workers. CBC News, September 10, 2013, accessed April 10, 2014 .
  18. ↑ Three reasons the PQ lost, and Couillard's biggest challenge. The Globe and Mail, April 8, 2014, accessed April 10, 2014 .
  19. ↑ Marois resigns after Parti Quebecois suffers resounding loss in Quebec election ( Memento from April 10, 2014 in the web archive archive.today )
personal data
SURNAME Marois, Pauline
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian politician (Parti Québécois)
DATE OF BIRTH March 29, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Quebec