MONTREAL—The sound in the background of the last stretch of the Quebec election campaign is that of PQ leadership knives being sharpened in anticipation of a poorer-than-expected showing on Monday.

Little short of a majority victory next week is likely to save Pauline Marois from becoming the latest female government leader to leave behind a provincial party in disarray.

Behind the scenes fingers are already being pointed at her brain trust for what more and more sovereigntist insiders privately describe as the most incoherent, most dispiriting campaign that the PQ has ever run.

If the party is defeated next week the assumption is that Marois will resign of her own free will, if not right on election night then within the days of the vote.

No one expects that she would lead the PQ in opposition in the next national assembly.

But even a minority victory might not buy Marois more than a short reprieve from her restless party.

On the heels of this campaign, a critical number of PQ members would be unlikely to countenance the notion of giving her a second chance to turn a minority government into a majority.

That would not be just because she would have allowed the big fish of a majority to get away.

When the April 7 vote was called polls suggested that a majority PQ government was within Marois’ grasp. But her original game plan turned out to be half-baked. It fell apart early on, leaving her and her team to scramble their way out of a series of strategic miscalculations.

By now it seems the PQ leader is essentially making it up as she goes along.

There was fresh evidence of that on Wednesday when Marois said that her government would help those fired from the public service for failing to comply with its secular dress code to find employment in the private sector.

Until now the PQ had never wanted to admit that the people who violated the charter would be fired.

But of even more concern to many péquistes than a mishandled campaign is the collateral damage to the unity of the PQ and the sovereignty movement that results from the controversial directions Marois has set the party on in the quest for a majority.

From day one the notion of imposing a secular dress code on all public sector workers has divided sovereigntists. And for many of those who dislike Marois’ brand of identity politics, her campaign hit rock bottom last Sunday.

At a party rally in Laval not a single PQ campaigner — including the leader herself — batted an eyebrow when feminist Janette Bertrand went off on a rant about how a charter-free Quebec could see Muslim students barring women from her condo’s swimming pool.

The same night on Tout le monde en parle, Radio-Canada’s most watched talk-show, Marois took more friendly fire, this time over the recruitment of media mogul Pierre Karl Péladeau as a star candidate.

Singer-songwriter Luc de la Rochellière — himself a sovereigntist — questioned how the PQ could still call itself socially democratic after bringing in one of Quebec’s most anti-union employers.

Former premiers Jacques Parizeau and Bernard Landry and ex-Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe have all taken issue with the exclusionary spirit of the draft PQ charter.

Still, early on in the campaign they and other sovereigntist luminaries were willing to give Marois a pass if only to ensure the election of a majority government. With one voice they lauded her recruitment of PKP as a great coup.

That was before the arrival of the Quebecor owner on the scene prompted an anti-referendum backlash that saw the campaign momentum shift from the PQ to the Liberals.

Marois has been backpedaling on the prospect on another referendum since then.

And so instead of spending the last week of the campaign basking in the prospect of the long-awaited opportunity to resume the march to sovereignty, the movement’s elder statesmen are left to contemplate the scorched earth that Marois has left in her campaign wake and to fret that there will be more if she wins on Monday.

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Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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