Émile Bouchard

Émile Bouchard
Who's Who of Nouvelle Alexandrie
Full Name	Émile Bouchard
Titles & Offices	Coordinator, Aldurian Independent Coalition (1754 AN-1760 AN) Member of the Federal Assembly for Alduria (1754 AN-1759 AN) Mayor of Saint-Augustin (1738 AN-1750 AN)
Occupation	Politician
Political Affiliation	Independent (Aldurian Independent Coalition)
Organizations	Aldurian Independent Coalition
Known For	Coordinating the Aldurian Independent Coalition and negotiating the FHP-Independent confidence and supply agreement, 1754
Residence	Saint-Augustin, Alduria
National Origin	Nouvelle Alexandrie
Citizenship(s)	Nouvelle Alexandrie

Émile Bouchard is a New Alexandrian politician from Alduria who served as Coordinator of the Aldurian Independent Coalition, the caucus of twelve independent deputies that held Premier José Manuel Montero's second government in office on confidence and supply through the 13th Cortes Federales. He held the post from 11.XI.1754 AN, days before the Coalition registered as a parliamentary caucus on 13.XI.1754 AN, until it dissolved early in 1760 AN, and lost his Federal Assembly seat at the 1759 general election.

Before entering federal politics, Bouchard served three terms as mayor of Saint-Augustin in Alduria, from 1738 AN to 1750 AN. He was elected to the Federal Assembly from the Aldurian regional list in the 1754 general election, and he became the principal interlocutor for the FHP-Independent confidence and supply agreement, 1754, which the twelve Aldurian deputies signed in their individual capacities on 25.X.1754 AN and which gave the Federal Humanist Party a working majority of nine seats.

As Coordinator, Bouchard tied the Coalition's support to visible returns for Alduria from the federal recovery, pressing in particular for the housing and agricultural strands of the Aldurian Economic Diversification and Recovery Act, 1755 to match the progress of its advanced-sciences strand.

The Recession of 1757 put the Coalition's position to its clearest test. The Federal Humanist Party governed without a majority of its own and depended on the Coalition's twelve votes for confidence and supply, and Bouchard set the price of that support in regional terms, telling the Federal Assembly that the Coalition would judge the 1758 AN budget "by what reaches Alduria, not by what is said about it in Cárdenas." The General Appropriations and Taxation Act, 1758 that the government brought steered its recovery spending toward the producing Regions, and carried with the Coalition's support on 1.IV.1758 AN.

During the 1758 premiership term limits referendum, which proposed capping service as Premier at two terms, Bouchard supported a two-term limit in principle but objected to the text as published, under which service completed before the amendment would count toward the cap. He proposed instead that Premier José Manuel Montero's current term be counted as his first under the new rule, which would have left Montero eligible to seek one final mandate at the 1759 general election, and said he would support the referendum if the transitional provision were changed. His conditional position was reported as a third stance alongside the Yes and No campaigns, though it was not offered as a separate ballot option, and the Aldurian Independent Coalition withheld support for the amendment as published over its retroactive effect. The measure was rejected on 1.XII.1758 AN, 64.0 percent to 36.0 percent.

In the run-up to the 1759 general election, Bouchard made the uneven reach of the federal recovery the Coalition's central test, asking whether the recovery package had reached the inland mining towns around Piriya or only the recovering coast at Punta Santiago. He pressed for the recovery pacts and the still-unbuilt housing to land in the producing districts rather than the coast, while Treasury officials answered that the pacts had been built for those Regions and economists called the divide a structural one.

Defeat and the Coalition's dissolution

At the 1759 general election Bouchard lost his seat, defeated in the inland mining districts he had pressed the recovery to reach, after five years sustaining the government. The Federal Humanist Party the Coalition had held in office fell from 372 seats to 293 and passed into opposition, and the Aldurian Independent Coalition Bouchard had coordinated, its twelve deputies reduced to a handful, wound up its registration early in 1760 AN. The crossbench role Alduria's independents had once played passed to Piti Gándara, who had refused to join the Coalition and held her seat.

See also

• Aldurian Independent Coalition
• FHP-Independent confidence and supply agreement, 1754
• Aldurian Economic Diversification and Recovery Act, 1755
• New Alexandrian general election, 1759
• Piti Gándara