On the surface it is a clear choice for Quebeckers and the long Canadian nightmare finally can move toward resolution: Vote for the Parti Quebecois if you want the province to separate from Canada, vote for the Liberals if you don't.
But that would be too easy, wouldn't it?
The opportunity comes tomorrow, when Quebec votes for a new provincial government. The outgoing government is Liberal. The Liberals won last year's national election and still are standing tall in the polls. So this would indicate the Liberals stand a good chance of retaining control of Quebec.
Not necessarily.
Quebec voted overwhelmingly against the Liberals nationally. What they voted for was the Bloc Quebecois, a new creation to get a separatist voice into the national parliament.
Provincially, the separatist organization is the Parti Quebecois and the leaders of the two independence parties -- Lucien Bouchard of the Bloc and Jacques Parizeau of the PQ -- don't get along together all that well.
"Lucien sometimes feels like he's trapped in the sidecar of a motorcycle driven by Parizeau," a Bouchard friend told Maclean's magazine several months ago. "Every time Jacques heads for another cliff, he's forced to sit there quietly, hanging on for dear life and hoping for the best."
Mr. Parizeau was considered something of a death knell when he won party leadership in 1988 because of his hard-line separatist stance and his noncharismatic personality. A natty dresser who, strangely enough, effects Britishisms, Mr. Parizeau replaced Pierre Marc Johnson.
Pierre Marc Johnson happens to be the brother of Daniel Johnson, the current Liberal premier and the man who is fighting to keep the job he inherited in January when longtime Premier Robert Bourassa stepped down.
Mr. Johnson, despite the name, is a francophone, a native French-speaker, as is some 80 percent of the province, Canada's second largest and one representing both some 25 percent of the country's population and a vital link in Canada's stack-of-dominoes provincial geography.
Mr. Parizeau and Mr. Johnson share something else besides a desire for the premiership, and that is a lack of luster. Neither seems to appeal greatly to the voters and, in the absence of charisma, the election may have to be decided on the issues.
The main issue obviously is the PQ desire to make Quebec an independent country. Mr. Parizeau has pledged a referendum on independence within 10 months of taking office.
Another issue is Quebec's economy, which is in worse shape than the overall Canadian economy and not helped by all the uncertainty over Quebec's future.
Lastly, there is the issue that may save voters from having to deal with the other issues: The Liberals have been in power for nine years and people are tired of them. No Quebec government in 35 years has won a third straight term.
The polls are finding that while most Quebeckers plan on voting for the separatists, they don't favor separation. (Many are not even sure what separation means; 33 percent think an independent Quebec would still send members to Canada's national parliament.) A similar referendum in 1980 was defeated 60 percent to 40 percent, and polls indicate a similar tally if one were held now.
Seizing on this oddity, the Liberals zeroed in on separation, warning of what they saw as the consequences of independence. The separatists tried to downplay their baguette et buerre issue. In fact, several news organizations were slipped a letter on PQ stationary telling PQ candidates not to even discuss independence with reporters. But Mr. Parizeau himself couldn't resist informing the electorate. "There are . . . no costs to sovereignty," he said in response to the Liberal claims.
The PQ tried to change the subject and pretend the election was about the economy.
Most observers seem to think the PQ will win easily. Francophones dominate in more than two-thirds of the districts and the heavy English and allophone (other language) vote, some 20 percent of Quebec's 7 million population, is concentrated in just a few districts.
Struggling unsuccessfully to show that it wouldn't be despotic, the PQ has kissed off the nonfrancophone vote. Efforts to get minority candidates were rejected by party hard-liners. The party did manage to attract a good crop of francophone candidates, though, one generally rated better than the Liberal slate, where many possible contenders apparently feared what being sacrificed would do to their resumes or egos.
One television debate was held, the first in Quebec politics in three decades, and its structured format and stolid candidates made it hardly worth the effort. The most interesting comment was Mr. Parizeau's response when asked if winning the election and then losing the referendum would mean the end of the separatism debate. "Absolutely not. The sovereignty of Quebec must be done," he said.
What this means in practical terms in unclear.
From her perspective as political columnist for the Montreal paper La Presse, Lysiane Gagnon has summed up the election:
"Mr. Johnson will ask voters to accept Canada as it is now, which in today's context -- after the lost Meech Lake and Charlottestown constitutional accords -- means Quebeckers would waive any bargaining power they might have as a minority within Canada.
"Mr. Parizeau will ask them to break with Canada, which means Quebeckers would relinquish their historical rights to a land spreading from the Atlantic to the Pacific and eventually, as L'actualite publisher Jean Pare likes to say, 'line up behind the Filipinos, the Tamils and the Russians [to get Canadian citizenship].'
"Quebeckers, unable to say yes to either option, will choose not to listen. Since this is, after all, a regular election and they know the PQ cannot do anything really serious before it holds a referendum on the specific issue of sovereignty, they decided months ago to turn the sound off. They plan to doggedly vote for the only opposition party they have on hand, just in case it proves to be a better government than the one they've had for nine long years."
A logical reaction, but not one without serious risk or consequences.
Mr. Bouchard's Bloc Quebecois is going to be in a strange position in the national parliament. As the second largest group of MPs, it is the official opposition. But if Quebec voters vote yes-no as expected, the Bloc's reason for existence will have disappeared. And if the referendum is approved, the Bloc would have a conflict of interests -- would it act as part of the national government or as representatives of Quebec? -- that would make its staying in Ottawa for any negotiations quite unseemly.
It is hard to outsiders to understand the Quebec cause. Although Canada's premieres for almost all the past 25 years, including today, have been from their province, Quebeckers complain they have no political power. Although their province traditionally gets more money from Ottawa than it sends, they feel put upon economically. Some even think the rest of Canada doesn't give the Montreal Expo baseball team enough credit because it is Quebec-based.
Further indicating the Quebec confusion/schizophrenia were the results of a nationwide poll taken by Maclean's over the summer. Asked if Canada is the best country in the world, 83 percent of Quebeckers said yes, the highest percentage of any province.
Asked if they were just referring to the area where they lived, only 16 percent said that was what they meant. Asked if they were referring just to parts of Canada, only 1 percent said yes, the lowest such response in the nation.
The situation facing Quebec is not without recent Canadian parallels.
* Last year Canadian Prime Minister Biran Mulroney left office just before an election for a third term, and Kim Campbell was chosen to carry the banner. The new-leader ploy did not work and the Conservatives were all but voted out of existence.
* In 1988 Mr. Mulroney was elected to his second term on a basically one-plank platform, a trade pact with the United States. He won, put the pact through and spent four years with no other mandate and with so little public support that his popularity ratings remained far below freezing.
If both parallels hold in Quebec, the end to the separatist soap opera may be at hand, not by the separatists losing the election (and living to fight yet another day), but by winning, losing the referendum and alienating the electorate as they linger around serving out an unpopular term.
Myron Beckenstein is assistant foreign editor of The Baltimore Sun.