[RCO]

( a big test for both charest and the new CAQ party , who has somehow managed to land a former bloc quebecois mp as a candidate )

Two provincial by-elections called for June 11



By Kevin Dougherty, QUEBEC BUREAU CHIEFMay 10, 2012




QUEBEC — Premier Jean Charest, who said on Sunday he has no plans for a general election in June, has called two by-elections instead in Argenteuil and LaFontaine, two ridings vacated by former Liberal ministers, for June 11.

The decision was made at a cabinet meeting Wednesday.

The contests will be the first electoral tests for the Coalition Avenir Québec, the new party formed by François Legault.

Argenteuil was held by David Whissell, who chose to leave the Charest cabinet rather than give up his interest in a paving company that received government contracts without public tenders.

The CAQ is running Mario Laframboise in Argenteuil, northwest of Montreal.

Laframboise was a Bloc Québécois MP in Ottawa until the federal election last year and was the Bloc’s chief organizer for that campaign.

The Liberals have chosen Lise Proulx, an aide to Whissell, while the Parti Québécois candidate in Argenteuil is special-ed teacher Roland Richer.

Whissell resigned Dec. 16. Under Quebec law the premier must call a by-election within six months after an MNA quits.

LaFontaine was won for three elections in a row for the Liberals by Tony Tomassi, who resigned last week, rather than face an investigation by the National Assembly ethics commissioner. Tomassi, now facing criminal charges, has been absent from the assembly since the new code came into force on Jan. 1. The CAQ call for an investigation triggered his resignation.

Charest fired Tomassi from his cabinet and the Liberal caucus in May 2010 when it came to light he used a Petro Canada credit card, paid by Luigi Coretti, whose now-bankrupt security agency won a contract without tenders to guard Montreal police headquarters.

The CAQ has chosen lawyer Domenico Cavaliere as its candidate in LaFontaine, an east-end Montreal riding that usually votes Liberal. The Liberals and PQ have not announced the names of their candidates in LaFontaine for the June 11 by-election. However, the Liberals plan to reveal the name of their candidate at 3 p.m. Thursday. The name of Marc Tanguay, Quebec Liberal president, has been floated. Michel Rochette, the party's communications' director, would only say that Tanguay "has already said he is interested in running."


Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com.....z1usQItG2z

[RCO]

Liberals lose key Argenteuil by-election




Keep lafontaine; PQ scores victory as CAQ acts as a spoiler



By PHILIP AUTHIER, The Gazette June 12, 2012

Bled of thousands of its votes apparently by the Coalition Action Québec, Quebec's Liberals suffered a crushing electoral blow in the riding of Argenteuil Monday but held on in the fortress riding of Lafontaine.

After 46 years of voting Liberal, including the years when the MNA was Claude Ryan, voters in usually federalist Argenteuil turned their backs on a party that has been rocked by scandal, controversy and daily protests in the streets.

Whether the shift is permanent remains to be seen but the Parti Québécois bagged a major by-election prize, thanks apparently in large part to François Legault's CAQ party, which was on the ballot for the first time in its short history.

With 180 of 180 polls re-porting, PQ candidate Roland Richer clinched the Laurentian region riding by a slim margin of 501 votes.

The PQ bagged 36.16 per cent of the vote compared with 33.4 per cent of the vote for Liberal candidate Lise Proulx.

That was almost 5,000 fewer votes for the Liberals than in 2008 - and it appears the CAQ stole away much of the vote. CAQ candidate Mario Laframboise obtained 3,887 votes, or 21.4 per cent.

The PQ's share of the vote was not actually that different then in 2008 where it obtained 33.62 per cent.

The by-election loss will come as a warning to Charest, a man weighing scenarios and factors in the lead up to the next provincial election.

Although many believed the PQ would suffer most from vote splitting at the hands of the CAQ, Monday's results show the Liberals are not impervious either.

Another question for Charest is just how angry voters are with his government.

The good news for Legault is the Argenteuil result is a sign some federalist voters are willing to cast their votes with the CAQ.

On the other hand, they were not angry enough to elect a CAQ MNA in either riding. The CAQ placed third in both Argenteuil and Lafontaine.

"It's a choice we have to respect," Charest said Monday in a speech to crushed sup-porters in Argenteuil. Noting the Liberals won in the riding of Lafontaine, Charest found a way to put a good spin on the result.

"Here in the riding of Argenteuil it's a rain check," Charest said.

The CAQ nevertheless put up a surprisingly good battle for second place in Lafontaine, even though the party put most of its energy into supporting their star candidate in Argenteuil, Mario Laframboise.

To no one's surprise and with the polls only closed an hour, the Liberals won by their usual landslide in Lafontaine, in northeast Mont-real.

Voters there stuck to a 25-year unbroken tradition of voting Liberal despite the fact their MNA, Tony Tomassi, was fired in disgrace from the Quebec cabinet and faces six criminal charges, including fraud and accepting an illegal benefit.

If there was an inkling of dissent it was in the fact the Liberal majority slipped from Tomassi's score of 69.76 per cent of votes in the 2008 general election to about 53.32 per cent.

But a win is a win and Liberal candidate Marc Tanguay - the Liberal Party president parachuted into the riding at the last minute - was on his feet delivering his victory speech with votes from only 80 of 158 polling stations counted.

Remarkably and much to the disappointment of the CAQ, the PQ's candidate in Lafontaine, Frédéric St-Jean placed second even though he barely campaigned, not even opening an office.

The CAQ's candidate Domenico Cavaliere, who held second place for much of the evening, finished third.

On the other hand, the PQ had the Liberals in Argenteuil sweating all evening. At 9: 55 p.m., only 10 votes separated PQ candidate Richer and Liberal candidate Proulx, a former press aide to the de-parting MNA in the riding, David Whissell.

But throughout the campaign, analysts wondered whether the angst exhibited by voters in Montreal's streets would show up in the by-election results.

There was at least one pots-and-pans march in Lachute in Argenteuil riding, but it only drew about 200 people.

Yet the elections were the first chance for voters to legally express their dissatisfaction with the Liberals - at the ballot box.


Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com.....z1xcrNToR3