It's tough getting around to visit all the small communities in a place like Labrador. That's why getting free plane rides would give a huge advantage to any candidate who could score 'em. And, the smaller airline companies who serve Labrador might not have the liquid cash sitting around to donate to the harpercon candidate who could get them some sweetheart government contracts later, would have the wherewithal to provide those free rides.
That's called corruption 101.
Penashue tried to blame it on his inexperienced enthusiastic staffer, but that was bullshit.
In the end, blatant, glaring corruption brought down a harpercon cabinet minister. Amazingly, stephen harper believed that Penashue's idiotic excuses would be enough to placate the people of Labrador. Perhaps he was thinking that Penashue's bragging about how he'd hold up projects elsewhere until Labrador got some swag would convince the voters to pick the government stooge again in return for more goodies.
But the downfall of Penashue was a good thing. It meant that at least nominally, in some cases or circumstances, the rule of law is still a factor in Canadian politics. Evidence of this has been in short supply for a long, long time. And, Penashue's subsequent rejection by the voters of Labrador is even better. It shows that some Canadian voters are willing and able to put integrity before possible material gain.
I am saddened somewhat, by the final outcome. The riding had been narrowly won by Penashue from a Liberal. It had been a Liberal stronghold. Since it had basically been won by fraud, the party that lost by fraud should have had a clear field to go against Penashue in the byelection. I believe the NDP should have taken the high road and stepped aside to, really, let what had been the intention of the voters of Labrador last time, to prevail. Instead, the NDP is thinking about partisan self-interest. And doing so stupidly and ham-handedly. Despite the NDP's having polled a distant third last time, Mulcair and his brain-trust must have believed that to look like a contender for power, they should campaign to win in Labrador. And, they lost. Which was to have been expected. A perfect storm of circumstances combined to make the Liberals implode in 2011 and to make the NDP the head of a coalition government with the Liberals, ... er, um, ... I mean to make the NDP the Official Opposition in the face of the harpercons' stolen majority government. The NDP's response to this windfall has been to work mightily to become the intellectually and politcally bankrupt Liberal Party and thereby steal all the votes that the Liberals lost. (It doesn't make any sense to me either.)
The riding went to the Liberals as it should have. But that doesn't make me happy either. Because human beings are stupid creatures. And I'm human too. But one bit of stupidity I don't possess is infatuation with the very handsome Justin Trudeau. Lots of other people do. Even though Justin Trudeau is fine with shredding our civil rights in the name of anti-terrorism, and destroying the atmosphere in the name of the Tar Sands and the political power of big oil and Alberta's voters. He's Canada's Barack Obama. Just think of how Canada will look on the world stage with a dreamboat like Justin Trudeau as our representative!
Who cares if he's business as usual or worse? Look at all the nice US Democrats shrieking about how sweety-pie Obama has a right to kill you in the name of Wall Street. It's sickening.
In the end though, harper's in-your-face scuzzery and contempt for democracy is the real threat. The NDP should have taken the high road, given the Liberals their victory, and advertised it as a blow against the demonstrated enemy of Canadian democracy, stephen harper. They should focus their attacks on harper, harper, harper, and then embrace those aspects of the NDP that made them viable and the absence of which made the Liberals wither, and just advertise themselves as the antidote to the humiliations and abuses of late-capitalism that Canadian voters are asking for.
(I'll leave off by saying that in my search for the links for this place I saw an editorial about "What the Harper Government should learn from Labrador byelection defeat" [or words to that effect] by repulsive newspaper troll John Ibbitson. As if I'd bother to read what that yammering hack has to say about such an important subject! I'd prefer "What John Ibbitson should learn about how he's a contemptible, disgusting practical joke of a human being.")
2 comments:
The next Harper crony to be given the boot should be Mike Duffy, thwap.
Who is going to enforce that law though? Certainly not harper.
Our system was designed with rules that were expected to be followed by people with a shred of honour. It was not made for cynical ass-wipes like harper.
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