Vote Day Tomorrow
| 10/13/2008 | Posted by Patti under General |
A quiet Thanksgiving weekend is winding down as I write this. Quiet for me, but for politicians in Canada the weekend has been a mad sprint to the finish line. The campaign ends today and tomorrow Canada votes. If the polls are right, Harper will be held to another minority. With a bit of luck, a smaller minority than the last one.
It would take a huge miracle for enough votes to move from the NDP and the Greens to bring Dion into minority territory. If instead of three parties arrayed against Harper there was but one, the Liberals would be in clear majority territory, which tells me, any mandate for Harper is actually no mandate at all. The majority of Canadians don’t want him.
While I don’t want Harper in power at all, a minority is better than nothing. Historically, a minority government has been a time for progressive movement in Canadian politics. A minority PM traditionally needed to practice some compromise and consensus to get bills through the house with the support of at least one opposition party. In the last Parliament, Harper did none of that except when it came to the extension of the Afghanistan mission to 2011.
Harper demanded, bullied, belittled and when all that might have failed, he declared votes to be a matter of confidence. He was able to play on the fact that the Liberals were in disarray, unsure if their new leader or them was ready for an election. It sent the Opposition Liberals scurrying out of the chamber rather than vote with the government.
In a new Conservative minority, that shouldn’t be the case. Harper seems to assume that the Liberals will move to dump Dion if he fails to win tomorrow. It is not beyond possibility that they will turn on Dion but it would be contributing to their own destruction should that happen. Dion has been far from running a stellar campaign but considering the focussed esteem killing assault the Conservatives have trained on him since he was elected leader, he has done amazingly well.
IF the LIberals are smart enough to leave their leader alone and focus on holding the feet of a new minority to the fire, Harper may find the heat on his own backside for a change. Time will tell.
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