Think Quebec politics is complicated? This campaign may just be the beginning.

When Jean Charest called the current election on Aug. 1, many believed he would again pull something out of his hat and keep his party afloat, perhaps even win.

That won’t happen. Charest came out swinging, but most of his lines sound stale. Scaring voters with talk of a referendum isn’t a winning strategy when the Parti Québécois doesn’t need to go much beyond its natural constituency of sovereignty supporters or sympathizers to win a majority of seats with about 35 per cent of the vote.

Another line that falls flat is Charest’s claim that a vote for the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) is a vote for the PQ. Indeed, not only has CAQ Leader François Legault spared no effort to distance himself from the PQ and its goal of sovereignty, but most of the CAQ’s gains have been made at the Liberals’ expense, and the new party has now entered what pollsters call the “pay-zone,” where vote gains don’t just annoy the forerunners, they win seats.

This campaign is indeed confusing, but we ain’t seen nothing yet.

First, one of the likely scenarios after Sept. 4 would be a PQ minority government with the CAQ holding the balance of power. But Legault has repeatedly vowed he would never support any government led by either the PQ or the Liberals.

To make things even stranger, that might force the Liberals to prop up a PQ government. This is not such an unlikely scenario, even if the Liberals manage to cling onto second place, because they probably will be the weakest link in the chain for several months.

First, if the Liberals lose, polls suggest that Charest is almost certain to lose his seat in Sherbrooke. The party would have to go through a leadership selection process — for which it is not prepared. Strike one.

Remember that just a few days after the votes are counted, the Charbonneau Commission on allegations of corruption in the construction industry will start hearings, and revelations potentially implicating the Liberal party are likely to start trickling in. Strike two.

In such a weak position, the Liberals would have little choice but to support a minority PQ government, at great cost to their long-term political credibility (ask any federal Liberal in Ottawa how propping up the federal Tories worked for the party).

A minority government situation will do little to help a new government solve the major crises of the day. For example, how will the CAQ and the Liberals react when the PQ attempts to fulfill one of its promises, which is to repeal the controversial law the Liberals and the CAQ passed in reaction to the student protest movement? How would a PQ government find support for increased tax-based funds for universities, when the other parties invested so much to support a tuition increase?

The balkanization of the party system in Quebec is likely to continue after this election, at considerable cost to the provincial government’s capacity to govern.

It seems that Thomas Mulcair would be delighted to play his part. Indeed, the leader of the New Democratic Party announced last week that he supports the creation of a provincial branch of the NDP. Mulcair’s surprising announcement suggests he is determined to throw the third and last strike that would send the party of his old nemesis, Jean Charest, to the dugout for good.

This was a bold and unexpected incursion in a campaign that federal politicians had hitherto studiously avoided wading into. It is not clear who this intervention was intended to help in the current campaign, but its future implications are mind-boggling.

In Quebec, it is far from certain that a provincial NDP would easily occupy the Liberal party’s vacated space or find much support among parties of the left, unless the national question magically disappears from the political landscape.

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More likely, Mulcair would soon find that the fast friends his party made in May 2011 would not take kindly to this attempt to come play in their park. If the federal NDP wants to consolidate its hold on Quebec, jumping into the provincial fray would be the last thing they should do.

Pierre Martin is a professor of political science at the Université de Montréal.

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