What on Earth was that all about?
With a modest alteration in the make up of Parliament as the final result of "the election to nowhere", an historically low voter turnout came as no surprise to Herman Goodden ...
Prime Minister Stephen Harper
and the Conservative Party did not get the majority mandate they so clearly
sought when they discarded their policy of a fixed election date to call
for this last one half a lifetime ago, it
now seems. They were hoping
to secure themselves a larger base that would give them more mobility for
remedial action when the economic storm that everybody sensed was coming,
finally hit.
Instead the Tories ended
up driving their campaign bus right into the rising waters of the disastrous
international economic meltdown that hit full force about one month before
badly-rattled Canadians went to the polls in a mood to punish everyone.
With only two-and-a-half
years of fiscally cautious minority power under his belt (following 13
unbroken years of profligate Liberal spending) it seemed a bit much to
pin this disaster in its entirety on Stephen Harper's chest.
Yet that is precisely (albeit
heavy-handedly) what all four of the other party leaders attempted to do
in the two nationally broadcast all-party debates the first in French,
the second in English. The unseemly spectacle of Stephane Dion (Liberal),
Giles Duceppe (Bloc Quebecois), Jack Layton (New Democrat) and Elizabeth
May (Green) all piling on the long-suffering Harper was so absurdly unbalanced
and patently unfair it may have backfired.
Harper seems to have won
some of his support from undecided voters and TV watchers just for keeping
his cool and behaving like the only rational adult in the room.
In the final tally the Conservatives
did significantly increase their seat count to 143, followed by the Liberals
with 76, the Bloc with 50, the NDP with 37, and two others going to independent
candidates. While Tory gains
were shy of that coveted
majority, they have at least won a more stable perch from which to govern.
The numbers now shake down in such a way that it will take the full co-operation
of the Liberals, the Bloc and the NDP working in concert to deep six Harper's
initiatives. And the prospects of that ever happening are dauntingly slight.
Immediately following the
election most of the press coverage focussed on a pathetic melodrama that
might fittingly be entitled, The Perils of Stephane. Overseeing the once
unstoppable party's third consecutive drop in seats held, Dion and his
infamous Green Shift program both went down for the final count together.
Two video clips that made
the rounds of the Internet in the campaign's final week helped seal his
fate. In the first one a near spastic Dion, decked out in a Habs jersey,
disgraces himself in a display of his road hockey skills where it takes
him forever to plant the tennis ball in a net manned by a sympathetic goalie
who's really not trying very hard to deflect them. In the other our gormless
leader asks three times for an English language interviewer to reformulate
his perfectly straightforward question about what Dion would do if he were
prime minister. And still he never manages to quite formulate an answer.
Even as Dion crept away
into hiding at Stornoway late on election night, speculation was buzzing
as to just when the cash-strapped Liberals could most gracefully commence
the unpleasant business of throwing him overboard and choosing his successor.
And you know what that means?
Come on down, Iggy and Bob, for another round of Ex-Fraternity Buddies
Cage Match! And this time it's personal!
Disappointing as this unnecessary
election turned out to be for all of the leaders and their parties (except
the nationally irrelevant Bloc and the ever-inscrutable Duceppe) I believe
a special Palm D'or For Political Incompetence and Mayhem needs to be awarded
to Elizabeth May and the Greens.
Without a single elected
MP to their credit (including May herself) she managed to finagle her way
onto the televised leader debates. This was fine with Duceppe and also
with Dion who had already announced that the Liberals wouldn't run a candidate
in the Nova Scotia riding of Central Nova where a Technicolor-dreaming
May was looking to unseat popular Tory stalwart and cabinet minister, Peter
McKay. Jack Layton (fearful that the Greens would only leech away potential
NDP support) nixed the idea, as did Stephen Harper (perhaps believing in
his maddeningly reactionary way that a party without any elected representation
hadn't earned a seat on that panel).
But feminist supporters
of the NDP raised such a ruckus at Layton's exclusionary "old boys" stance
that he was compelled to cave in, which left Harper as the lone holdout.
"Well, if it's okay with the NDP," said Harper,
in effect, "then who am
I to object?"
Kate McMillan on her Small
Dead Animals website out of Saskatchewan, likened Harper's reluctant capitulation
here to the famous fence painting scene in Tom Sawyer where our titular
hero persuades others to take on the heavy work of whitewashing a fence
by pretending he doesn't want them to. One also thinks of Br'er Rabbit
in the Uncle Remus stories pleading with his tormentors not to fulfil his
fondest wish by chucking him into that nasty old briar patch. Wherever
the Green Party got their votes, Harper knew that it certainly wasn't going
to be from the Conservatives.
Having wheedled and cajoled
her way into the big leagues, May ignominously dropped the ball in the
home stretch. In the last week she infuriated her party's own base by telling
voters that if it looked like the Greens didn't have a realistic shot at
winning (and they didn't anywhere) then they should vote Liberal
instead.
So in the end, the Greens
supplied the same meddlesome dynamic to the national stage as the Bloc
Quebecois. Because their vote is so geographically concentrated the Bloc
can win 50 seats while garnering only 10% of the national vote.
The Greens captured 6.8%
of the national vote and couldn't make that translate into a single seat
of their own. It will help fill up their coffers, however, and ensure that
with or without Elizabeth May, the Greens will be back to muddy up the
next election by skewing support to the Liberals and the NDP.
That prospect must strike
abject terror in Stephen Harper's Br'er Rabbit heart.