At least the media seem to some extent to have exhumed the lede they buried. The net result has been to draw people's attention to the one-party state that presently prevails in Canada between elections. The potential for majority governments to behave this way has always been there, but Harper has exploited every opportunity to establish his de facto dictatorship, Who knows? We might get serious electoral reform out of this.Dawg said two important things there. The first is that there has always been the possibility of a government abusing the latent power that a majority gives. harper, the anti-democratic thug, is the first prime minister to actually do so. Secondly, with the combination of the wholesale failure of the neo-liberal economic model and the naked brutality of "conservatism," there just might be a reckoning for these assholes. I hope to whatever that this is the darkness before the dawn. (But I've been there before.)
Friday, November 18, 2011
What Dawg Said ...
In the comments thread of one of his own blog entries:
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4 comments:
Would talk of electoral reform be bandied about so much had the NDP formed a government or would they have just taken more time to bash Conservatives?
Uh, WWU, ... we've been bandying about for electoral reform for quite a long time.
I and many other people on the left have been calling for proportional representation for years.
And, furthermore, if the NDP has permanently replaced the Liberals and we move to a two-party state such as Manitoba, Britain and the USA have, the party leadership might hypocritically find themselves able to love our first-past-the-post after all.
But, ... and this is Dawg's main point ... the way that harper is taking the technical power of a majority government and pushing it to its limits, might just alert everyone to the dangers inherent in our unbalanced system of government.
I agree that Harper's running roughshod over what used to be unwritten rules may eventually be the cause of electoral reform.
There would be a delicious irony to that.
Owen,
Indeed. Maybe while harper is whiling away his golden years in a prison cell he will at least reflect dully on how his place in history is assured.
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