Chantal Hébert: Battle fatigue for the PQ? Or the prospect of a return to the opposition benches?
(The Star Movies)

With only months to go to a fall Quebec election, some of the Parti Québécois’ best and brightest are rushing for the exit.On Tuesday, three popular sovereigntist MNAs announced they would not seek re-election in October. The list of those who will watch from the sidelines as Jean-François Lisée fights his first election campaign as leader is expected to grow.To a man and a woman those departing insist they had no quarrels with their latest leader. Instead they all claim to have lost the fire in their bellies.Some of those who are taking their leave from politics have served in the National Assembly for decades. A credible case can be made that they are suffering from battle fatigue and that the latter is exacerbated by the prospect of a return to the opposition benches next fall.But the list of those leaving also includes 40-year-old Alexandre Cloutier, a rare, bright young star in a party that has become too dependent for its own good on the support of aging baby-boomers.The next question for the PQ to struggle with is whether a leader who fails to motivate his caucus is liable to do well in a general election.The year-end polls on Quebec voting intentions put the PQ in third place, far behind the leading Coalition Avenir Québec and the ruling Liberals.Lisée, who has been leader for little more than a year, has so far failed to make a positive impression on most voters.On his watch, PQ fortunes have declined steadily to the point that there is now open speculation that Quebec’s premier sovereigntist party is in a death spiral.In that perspective there are those who see the departing Cloutier as Quebec’s version of Emmanuel Macron — the French president who broke the mould of France’s politics by leading a breakaway movement to power.No one seems to believe the repeat leadership candidate is done with politics, starting with his mother, who is convinced her son has not given up on his ambition to becom ...