MONTREAL - Pauline Marois has twice seen the Parti Quebecois crown slip through her fingers. Now she has it in a stranglehold.
The longtime party stalwart became PQ leader by acclamation Tuesday when no other candidate emerged to challenge her nomination.
Now the woman once ridiculed for equipping her ministerial office with a silent flush -- jokingly called a "stealth'' -- toilet during $800,000 in renovations has the task of pulling the plug on Premier Jean Charest.
It won't be easy. The PQ is bankrupt. It needs to be rebuilt again after its flirtation with the youthful Andre Boisclair as chief led to electoral disaster and dropped the PQ to third-party status in the legislature.
The PQ figures Marois is up to the task this time.
When she ran for the top job in 1985, she came in second but didn't have the blessings of the party establishment. In 2005, she grabbed second place again but the party decided to capitalize on Boisclair's supposed youth appeal.
Now the 58-year-old Marois looks mighty good to the reeling PQ, which went from official Opposition in the legislature to a rump of 36 seats behind the upstart Action democratique du Quebec.
Even Gilles Duceppe, who has held Quebec for the Bloc Quebecois in his 10 years as leader of that sovereigntist party, had to concede that the cards were in Marois' favour during his heartbeat-long foray into the PQ leadership race this spring. He beat a hasty and embarrassing retreat within 24 hours of declaring.
Marois said Tuesday her first task will be to get the party ready and she will meet with the caucus and party executive on Wednesday.
It's been a while since the hand of the mother of four adult children has rocked a cradle but Marois has let it be known from the outset how she plans to rule the often fractious PQ.
She won't be tied to a referendum deadline. She wants to reach out to Quebecers and create wealth for them. She wants to be a unifier.
Marois has already been criss-crossing the province during the last month, meeting with about 4,000 PQ members. She wants to beef up the party's program, which she said will be announced in September.
Marois, who gives the PQ gravitas that many thought was lacking in the mercurial Boisclair, also hopes to retreive disaffected PQ members who defected to the Action democratique and the social democratic Quebec solidaire.
Marois held more than a dozen cabinet posts since first being elected to the legislature in 1981, including the powerful finance portfolio. She served as deputy premier between 2001 and 2003 under Bernard Landry.
Her pursed lips and lidded eyes suggest the toughness behind the political perseverance she has brought to her quest to be the PQ's first female leader and Quebec's first woman premier.
A mechanic's daughter from St-Redempteur, near Quebec City, she is known for raising her offspring while having a thriving political career. She campaigned for her first election in 1981 just a few weeks before giving birth to her first child.
Marois is married to Claude Blanchet, the former head of the Quebec government's investment arm. She was an aide in the 1970s to two cabinet ministers -- Lise Payette and Jacques Parizeau -- before jumping into politics herself.
The former social worker and teacher helped draft Quebec's youth protection legislation, hailed at the time as the most progressive in North America.
As health minister in the late 1990s, she bore the scorn for a weakened health-care system when she was brought in to reform it after deep budget cuts.
Marois hasn't ruled out returning to the legislature via a byelection in Boisclair's Montreal-area riding but insists she isn't putting any pressure on him.
"Nothing is being ruled out,'' she said. "But one thing is clear and I don't want any ambiguity about this -- I have not asked Andre Boisclair to quit and I won't ask him. That's a decision he has to make.''
