Parti Quebecois Leader Pauline Marois speaks to reporters at the end of a caucus meeting Tuesday, June 7, 2011 at the legislature in Quebec City. Marois faced the resignation of four members from her caucus in the last two days.
Pauline Marois's mistake was to believe in her own astonishing popularity numbers.
Only seven weeks ago, the Parti Québécois Leader received a massive level of support - 93 per cent - from party members at a PQ convention.
The vote appears to have given Ms. Marois an inflated sense of control over her caucus. Her vulnerability, however, was demonstrated on Monday when three heavyweight MNAs quit the caucus; a fourth bolted on Tuesday.
"The vote of 93 per cent was an illusion," said veteran Quebec political observer Christian Dufour. "It led Mrs. Marois to believe she had control over her party. That was her mistake."
Now a crisis over a bill on a Quebec City arena has shifted instead to the leadership of Ms. Marois, who aspires to be the first woman to occupy the premier's office in Quebec. Her test is whether she has the survival skills to lead a notoriously fractious party, which has a tradition of taking down its leaders.
The resignations of Louise Beaudoin, Pierre Curzi and Lisette Lapointe on Monday had shades of political hara-kiri for a party poised to form Quebec's next government.
The principal beneficiary of the big-name resignations may be the province's unpopular Liberal Premier, Jean Charest.
"He's just gotten an incredible gift," said Mr. Dufour, a political scientist at Quebec's École nationale d'administration publique.
"The resignations were like dropping an atomic bomb on the PQ," he said. "It's bigger than the arena. It's about the leadership of Pauline Marois."
Ms. Marois took over the PQ leadership in 2007, on her third try. She came to the job with an impressive résumé: after winning a seat in 1981, she held every key cabinet portfolio from finance and health to education. She has filled in as PQ vice-president and deputy premier.
She is the architect of Quebec's popular $5-a-day universal daycare program (now $7 a day) and tackled the volatile issue of shifting Quebec from religious-based to linguistic-based school boards.
Despite her modest roots - her father was a garage mechanic - she has struggled to overcome an image often described as haughty and removed. She is married to Quebec multimillionaire Claude Blanchet, the former head of Quebec's investment arm.
In an attempt at an image makeover, Ms. Marois ceased appearing in public in colourful scarves or showy jewellery. She also tried to sell the family mansion, most recently listed by Sotheby's at $6.9-million, in the Montreal suburb of Île-Bizard. Ms. Marois has struggled, she has said, to overcome what she sees as voter reluctance to support a woman; she is the first to become leader of a major Quebec political party.
In addition, she has had to deal with constant pressure from the hardline pro-sovereignty faction in the party. And although she took the PQ to Official Opposition status in the 2008 election, she has failed to catch on with voters or capitalize on Mr. Charest's dismal poll ratings.
Her years in office, and her identification as a member of the PQ old guard, are considered baggage in a province that has demonstrated an appetite for change; the recent federal election saw Quebeckers turf out the sovereigntist Bloc Québécois in favour of the NDP.
"Because of her age and her long tenure at the PQ, it's become impossible for her to incarnate change," said Christian Bourque of the polling firm Léger Marketing. "Her experience has become the symbol of 'same old, same old.' "
Now, she faces a bigger test: Whether she's yesterday's woman or Quebec's future premier.