A "Softy" Says Farewell

Trudeau resigns as Liberal Party leader

Since his party was turned out of office by Joe Clark's Progressive Conservatives six months ago, Pierre Elliott Trudeau has rarely sported a boutonniere. But as he addressed the weekly caucus of Liberal Party M.P.s in Ottawa last week, a bright yellow rose was attached to his lapel. In a halting voice, Trudeau began to read from a prepared statement: "I am announcing today that after spending nearly twelve years as leader of the Liberal Party, I am stepping down." Then he broke down in tears, explaining: "Well, you always knew I was a softy." That got a standing ovation from his Liberal colleagues, who knew him as a quick-witted, sometimes abrasive figure during eleven years as Canada's Prime Minister.

Trudeau, 60, did not spell out his reasons for relinquishing the Liberal leadership; yet it was clear from his lackluster performance as the top spokesman of the opposition that he was bored with the job. Liberal stalwarts in western Canada were dismayed two weeks ago when he begged off from a party gathering because he had "the flu." Their dismay turned to anger when they saw in their newspapers a photograph of Trudeau cantering into a Manhattan disco. His estranged wife, Margaret, who once frequented such night spots, has bought a townhouse in Ottawa to be near the couple's three young sons.

Many Liberals believed that voters had become so disenchanted with Trudeau that as long as he remained leader the party stood no chance of unseating

Clark's shaky new government. In two by-elections last week, Conservative candidates were defeated, thereby shaving the Tories' working majority in the 282-member House of Commons to a razor-thin one vote. The Conservatives have narrowly turned back three recent votes of noconfidence, but it is unlikely that Clark will call a new election for a bigger mandate until after the Liberals decide on Trudeau's successor, probably next spring. The Liberals will most likely follow their pattern of alternating French with English leaders. The foremost contenders: former Finance Minister John Turner, 50, a bilingual Toronto lawyer who resigned from Trudeau's Cabinet in 1975, and Donald Macdonald, 47, a Toronto attorney who also served as Trudeau's Minister of Finance until two years ago.

In his farewell statement to the nation, Trudeau declared: "Wherever I am or whatever I do, I will continue to work and fight for our country." That referred to his bitter opposition to the long postponed referendum in which Quebec's Separatist Premier Rene Levesque will ask for a mandate to negotiate a vaguely defined "sovereignty-association" for his province with the rest of Canada.

Levesque's Parti Quebecois, it now appears, could lose the referendum. In three by-elections to the provincial Parliament two weeks ago, candidates were decisively defeated by Liberals, whose leader in Quebec, Claude Ryan, is an unbending opponent of separatism.

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