MONTREAL - Embattled Parti Quebecois Leader Andre Boisclair may have to face a leadership review sooner than he expected.
The party executive met in Montreal over the weekend and proposed that the next national congress, and the leadership review it entails, move up to September 2008 from a planned date in 2009.
"The (provincial election) results of March 26 are of particular concern to us,'' the executive council said in a statement. "Many lessons must be learned from this result, and that's why we've undertaken an analysis that we will carry out with rigour and realism.''
However, the council also offered its support for Boisclair, who they said "conducted an excellent campaign'' and has "much to offer the party and Quebec.''
Party officials will make a final decision at a meeting of riding presidents in May.
Boisclair's leadership was being criticized even before the party's dismal result in the recent provincial election, when the PQ dropped to 36 of the 125 seats in the Quebec national assembly and lost its status as the official Opposition.
Only Friday Boisclair made an appeal to Pequistes not to abandon the party, after the president of the capital region riding, Philippe Edwin-Belanger, announced his resignation.
Belanger said he was leaving the separatist party because Boisclair would not submit to a confidence vote this year or early in 2008.
But Boisclair has repeatedly rejected the blame for falling PQ fortunes.
"People understand that the problem is not the team leader, that the difficulty isn't found just there,'' he said in Quebec City. "It is more fundamental than that.''
