Quebec Premier Bouchard resigns

Bouchard

QUEBEC CITY, Quebec (CNN) -- Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard resigned his post on Thursday, at the same time letting go of the reins of the separatist Parti Quebecois.

"I have decided to end my participation in public affairs and to resign my role as premier of Quebec," Bouchard said during a press conference in a room at the French-speaking province's legislature.

Deputy Premier Bernard Landry told the Montreal Gazette on Wednesday that he had "tried for hours and hours to make him change his mind, but the mountain was too great to climb."

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Landry, who said Bouchard had both "personal and political reasons" for stepping down. is considered a possible successor to Bouchard as head of the party.

Bouchard said he would stay on until a successor is chosen, a process that could take several weeks.

Rumors of the pending resignation broke on Wednesday, when Parti Quebecois members of parliament were summoned to Quebec City for an emergency meeting on Thursday.

Bouchard, 62, first became Quebec's premier in 1996 after the resignation of former Parti Quebecois leader Jacques Parizeau. Bouchard was credited with leading the separatists to within 1 percentage vote of victory in a referendum on independence, even though Parizeau was premier at the time.

Bouchard, formerly Canada's ambassador to France and a senior minister in the government of former Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, was re-elected in 1998 for a five-year term.

Despite economic policies that helped turn Quebec's C$6 billion (US$4 billion) budget deficit into a surplus, Bouchard ran afoul of party hard-liners who want a stronger push for independence even though opinion polls indicate a majority of Quebecois are no longer interested in separation from Canada.

The split reached the surface as the hard-liners began to rally behind 70-year-old Yves Michaud, whose controversial comments about Jews and English-speakers led Bouchard -- and other Cabinet ministers -- to censure him.

On a radio show last month, Michaud said Jews appeared to think they were "the only people in the world to have suffered in the history of humankind." Bouchard condemned Michaud's comments and vowed to block him from running as a party candidate in an upcoming by-election.

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