by PATRICK LEJTENYI

• Monday night at Café Campus was the scene of one swinging launch party for the lefty, sovereigntist-minded Union des forces progressistes (UFP). A slew of candidates, including the three with the highest profiles and biggest hope of electoral success, were introduced to a diverse crowd ranging from the young and pierced to the grey and curmudgeonly. The first was Amir Khadir, a doctor and noted peace activist who had visited Iraq earlier this year, running in Mercier (more on this below). The second was Gaétan Breton, a prof at UQÀM and author of several books on water management. He's the UFP's man in Ste-Marie-St-Jacques, where he'll be squaring off with, among others, former Montreal mayor and ADQiste Pierre Bourque. The third was Omar Aktouf, a prof at HEC Montréal and candidate for Rosemont.

The left was indeed in party-hardy mode, kicking off the festivities with a band playing Chilean music, followed by a performance by spoken word UFP supporter Francis Pellerin (leftist solidarity didn't preclude mutterings among the peanut gallery on the quality of the poetry, however). Other star guests included the still-spry veteran left-winger and party co-founder Paul Cliche, who won't be running, loquacious union firebrand Michel Chartrand and the always fascinating, ever-smilin' Svend Robinson.

As of Monday, the UFP had candidates in over half of the province's 125 ridings.

• The UFP launch did get some minor coverage in La Presse, Le Devoir and Le Journal de Montréal on Monday and Tuesday, and exactly nothing in The Gazette.

• It's looking like the Mercier riding is the one to watch for an exciting race in the coming weeks. The riding encompassing the Plateau and its environs is currently held by Liberal Nathalie Rochefort, who won it in an April '01 by-election. The riding will be contested by former BQ foreign and intergovernmental affairs critic Daniel Turp for the PQ, the little-known Vivian Goulder for the ADQ, Lyne Rivard for the Bloc Pot and Amir Khadir for the UFP.

The latter two should do well in Mercier if anywhere, and have a history of relative success. In the April '01 by-elections, 4,163 people voted for Paul Cliche, capturing an impressive 24.2 per cent of the vote, good enough for third place behind the Liberals and the PQ. The Bloc Pot's Pierre Audette won 890 votes, worth 5.2 per cent, for fifth place, behind the ADQ.

• Housing activists FRAPRU's Monday night demonstration outside the Sheraton Hotel, where Premier Landry was sucking up to federalists and denouncing war against Iraq, didn't get much media attention either, but that won't stop them from agitating in the near-future. Their biggest target, no surprise here, is Mario Dumont. They say they're still waiting for the Liberals to announce their housing policy, and were unimpressed with the PQ's latest budget.

"We aren't supporting any one party," says FRAPRU boss François Saillant. "We will be going after all of them to let people know where [the parties] stand."

He did mention that the one party to embrace their call for the construction of 8,000 units of social housing per year is the UFP. "But they're pretty far from being elected," he adds.

• Yes, that was Mario Dumont and his swarthy smile you saw on the cover of March's Concordia University Magazine, his alma mater's feel-good quarterly. The puff-piece alumni profile (he graduated with a BA in 1993 with "great distinction"), entitled "Our Man in Quebec City?" touched on some of his ideas, including raising tuition fees for university students. "We would like to have a bill on the funding of universities that will reduce the year-by-year worries about public financing, and would clarify how funding from the private sector works: what should be accepted, and what shouldn't," he's quoted as saying. "We would make funding more secure and predictable, so that management is possible."

Dumont also supports giving more funding to programs with higher employment levels after graduating, like engineering, as opposed to programs that don't, like English lit or history. :