Quebec bars veil at election booth
Sat, March 24, 2007
By CP
Sat, March 24, 2007
QUEBEC -- Muslim women will have to remove their face coverings if they want to vote in Monday's Quebec election.
Quebec's chief returning officer has reversed an earlier decision and is now telling Muslim women who wear a niqab to show their faces when they vote.
Facing threats from other citizens that they would show up at polling stations wearing masks, Marcel Blanchet said in Quebec City that voting day must proceed without incident.
Blanchet had to get two bodyguards as a result of his initial decision and Elections Quebec had received threatening phone calls and e-mails.
Quebec's three main political leaders had asked Blanchet to reverse the decision.
Blanchet says he's using special powers under electoral law to make the change.
Action Democratique du Quebec Leader Mario Dumont says the law must be evenly applied to all citizens on voting day.
Meanwhile, the Liberals and Action Democratique are desperately seeking unfaithful separatists.
That's what both Premier Jean Charest and Dumont were doing yesterday -- singing a siren song for sovereigntists who might stray from the Parti Quebecois on Monday.
"I see there are a lot of sovereigntists who don't want a referendum, who say, 'No, that's not what I want, I'm not there,' " Charest said in Thetford Mines, about 80 kilometres south of Quebec City.
Charest said another referendum wouldn't advance Quebec.
"They know that a referendum will divide us and that's not what Quebec needs right now when we've made very significant gains within the federation in the last four years."
Charest, Dumont and PQ Leader Andre Boisclair are in a three-way race to govern Quebec with an outcome that's almost impossible to predict and where every vote is looming as important.
Dumont asked those he's calling "realistic" sovereigntists to vote for the ADQ.
The ADQ leader attacked Boisclair and said the PQ leader is "too weak" to lead Quebec.
Dumont has attracted at least one public and vocal supporter of an independent Quebec, author Victor-Levy Beaulieu, who said he intends to vote ADQ because he doesn't like the urbane and urban direction the PQ has taken.
Charest warned voters yesterday about supporting the ADQ, saying it's just a "waiting room" for sovereigntists.
"It's true there are people who see the ADQ like a means to advance sovereignty," the premier said.
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Quebec bars veil at election booth
Muslims in the province of Quebec have been told to remove their veils on next Monday's Quebec general election.

A niqab.
Marcel Blanchet, Quebec's chief returning officer, says he is using special grants to make this law. He also hired two bodyguards after the office had received threatening phone calls and e-mails. Some residents were also promising to wear the niqāb, a veil which covers the whole face except for the eyes, on Monday's vote.

But before he made this decision, Blanchet allowed voters to wear the niqāb on voting day only if they showed their ID and voting card. Blanchet, however, was criticized by  all three main Quebec party leaders for that decision.

"Relevant articles to electoral laws were modified to add the following: any person showing up at a polling station must be uncovered to exercise the right to vote," he said.

Sarah Elgazzar, of the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations, said, in her opinion, that this will discourage Muslim voters to show up on election day.

An eleven-year-old Ontario girl, who played at a soccer tournament in Quebec in February, was removed from the tournament after she refused to take off her headscarf at the request of the referee. A Muslim woman, who worked at a prison in Quebec, last week, was fired from her job after she also refused to take off her veil.