Canada’s Chretien Won’t Seek Fourth Term

NEW YORK — Bowing to calls from within his own party to move aside, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien announced Wednesday that he won’t seek a fourth term in office and will step down in February 2004.

Chretien, 68, made his announcement at an abruptly assembled news conference to quell a near revolt within the Liberal Party. A simmering power struggle between Chretien loyalists and supporters of his party rival, Paul Martin, has distracted from governing, Chretien said, so when pushed, he made a decision.

“I will not run again,” he told a crowd of reporters and a few tearful Liberal Party supporters. “For 40 years, the Liberal Party has been like a family to me.” Stepping down, he said, is “the best way to bring back unity, to end the fighting, to resume interrupted friendships.”

Chretien’s departure after four decades on the national scene would mark the end of one of the most successful political careers in Canadian history. The 18th of 19 children from a small Quebec paper mill town, Chretien won his first Parliament seat when he was 29. Known as a scrappy “street fighter” who loves a political clash, by 33 he had become Canada’s youngest Cabinet member. Chretien worked to keep his province from seceding from Canada in the 1970s and helped reform federal policies toward indigenous peoples.

He became prime minister in 1993 and, in leading three consecutive majority governments, became the longest-serving leader among the industrial powers. He is credited with reversing Canada’s heavy deficits to achieve a healthy economic surplus and with staving off Quebec’s nearly successful quest for independence in 1995.

Deaf in one ear, and with his face partially paralyzed by Bell’s palsy, he has never been a polished politician, and portrays himself as a man of the people, “the little guy from Shawinigan,” who spoke of “the rich and the rest of us,” despite being a millionaire himself.

Since beginning his third term in November 2000, however, Chretien’s reign has been tarnished by accusations of corruption, patronage and lack of vision. The patronage scandal, involving government advertising and investment contracts, forced Chretien to strengthen ethics regulations. Internal political fighting all but paralyzed the party.

As his popularity waned, support for his rival, Martin, grew, and Chretien fired him as finance minister in June to head off a leadership challenge.

“The move backfired,” said John Duffy, a political analyst for Strategy Corp., a liberal think tank based in Toronto. “The party and public said, ‘It’s you who should go, not the heir apparent.’ ”

At a summer Liberal Party caucus, the feud escalated into a showdown. This week, Chretien tried to draw up a “loyalty list” of supporters, but only 88 of 170 party members were willing to pledge allegiance to their longtime leader. Faced with that shortfall, Chretien announced his impending retirement.

In his speech, Chretien said he will need 18 months to finish his governing agenda, and will then step down before the end of his term. He confided that he had decided when he started his third term not to seek a fourth and that he had already taken an option to buy a house to retire to in 2004. “And then, at the age of 70, I will look back with great satisfaction as I take my rest secure in the knowledge that the future of Canada is unlimited,” he said.

Martin, now the clear front-runner for Liberal Party leadership, praised Chretien on Wednesday as “an outstanding prime minister” and a courageous man and made clear that it’s better to have the street fighter from Shawinigan for you than against you.

“I can assure you that nobody in the government could have enjoyed the success they did without the support and leadership” of Chretien, he said.