Jacques Parizeau likes to say that politics is a violent sport. As polls continue to show the Action démocratique du Québec's retreat to third-party status, Mario Dumont must be painfully aware of how true Parizeau's words are.
It was only last year that newspapers and magazines were overflowing with stories on the making of Mario Dumont, the new boy wonder. How was it, they all mused, that this 32-year-old was now a serious contender for the premier's office and on the brink of sending Jean Charest running back to Ottawa and Bernard Landry back to his teaching post at UQÀM?
For many analysts, it was a sure sign that Quebecers were moving to the right of the political spectrum and leaving behind the ''outdated'' federalist-sovereignist debate.
The fact is that the ADQ's sudden rise wasn't quite that intellectual. It was crudely circumstantial. Last spring, the ADQ benefited from Jean Charest's repeated attacks against Landry. The premier was being accused of favouritism towards some lobbyist with close Parti Québécois ties.
As Jean Chrétien's federal government was also drowning in a scandal over the way it financed its Canadian unity propaganda, cynicism about politicians had reached an all-time high. The result was that the message that Dumont had been pounding for years finally got through: the PQ and the Liberals were two old parties that should be kicked out to let in the new, younger, more responsible ADQ. But the honeymoon was short-lived.
Just like ''old'' politicians do, Dumont became too sure of himself in face of a possible victory. Seven years after he'd campaigned for sovereignty with Parizeau and Bouchard, he told a Toronto business audience that the national question had fallen off the radar screen - something no leader in Quebec had ever said.
But Dumont's problems had started a few weeks earlier. By putting out a detailed and coherent action plan for the Liberals, Charest finally put an end to the free ride the ADQ leader was getting when it came to his program. That very day, when asked by reporters what his own plan was, Dumont shouted back what became his famed ''people don't want to know; they want to believe.'' The rest, as they say, is history.
A number of policy flip-flops followed while ADQ candidates were making up the party platform as they went along. Then came the inimitable Guy Laforest who, by comparing Landry to Duplessis, made federal Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion sound like a purring cat. So it became clear that Dumont's party wasn't ready to govern and that its right-wing ideas didn't reflect the values of most Quebecers. As support for sovereignty began to rise again, it was also obvious that the national question was still up there on the radar screen. And that's where Dumont's next problem could lie.
Charest now has a chance to weaken the ADQ even more by bringing francophone federalists back to the Liberal Party as Landry has begun to bring sovereignists back to the PQ. You can bet he'll be hounding the premier on his vague position on a third referendum, picturing the PQ's re-election as promising anything but stability. He'll also argue that the replacement of Jean Chrétien by Paul Martin - and the ensuing departure of Stéphane Dion, the most unpopular politician in Quebec - would set a softer tone for federal-provincial relations.
But the liberal leader also has to smoke Dumont out the same way he did the ADQ's platform. That means being clear to bring out his opponent's ambiguity. While Charest can state clearly where he stands as a strong federalist who believes that Québec is best served as a province of Canada, he must ask Dumont the one difficult question no one has asked him yet: If push came to shove and there was another referendum, under which umbrella committee would he register? On which platform would he stand?
Charest and Landry know where they would be, but since there is no ''sitting-on-the-fence'' committee for any referendum, would Dumont be on the Yes side or on the No side? And where would the sovereignist ADQ candidate Pierre Brien be? What would the born-again federalist Pierre Bourque do?
Surely, no one who hopes one day to form a government in Quebec can escape answering that most fundamental question.