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.