Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Such a parcel of rogues
(December 09) - An unusual word found it’s way onto the tip of the public tongue last week. Prorogue. Used effectively in a game of Scrabble, it can earn a skilled player as many as 92 points. The opponent may become demoralized, but can still play.
Used effectively in a game of politics, it can earn a skilled player much more. It brings to mind the familiar Scrabble player’s gambit of knocking the table over and spilling the tiles across the floor. It stops the game while the players argue about who was ahead when the crisis erupted.
Argue is just what the players will do for the next two months. If you think the attack ads during the election campaign were overwhelming, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the man who knocked the table over, has been spreading a blanket of befuddlement over the entire process. When he wasn’t telling half-truths last week, he was telling outright lies. Expect a lot more of the same over the Christmas season.
Sadly, Harper is not our only source of confusion. Frank Valeriote has appeared confused for the past week. In his first major test since the election, he has not looked strong. He was for the Liberal-NDP coalition. Then he was against it. Then he was for it again. Now that Paul Martin is gone, is Frank contending for the Mr. Dithers title? It looks as though he deserves it.
There was a small rally in favour of the coalition in St. George’s Square last Saturday. It wasn’t a huge crowd, and Valeriote’s absence was noted by those who did show up. He should have been there. During the election campaign, he claimed to be in favour of uniting Liberal, NDP and Green voters to stop Harper. That is what the coalition was all about. When it came time to stand and be counted, he was absent.
The opposition continues to circle around Harper. He slipped through their net once and could do it again. He pledged to use every legal means available to prevent the Liberals and NDP from forming the next government.
As I see it, the only thing he has left up his sleeve is to present a budget and then, if the Liberals still have the stomach to oppose him, ask the Governor General for a new election.
She might refuse, but not likely. She is the Queen’s representative, and the Queen is our head of state. Only on very rare occasions does the Queen refuse to do as the Prime Minister tells her. For 800 years our democracy has evolved by taking power away from the palace and putting it into parliament. For the past half century, since the days of Pierre Trudeau, Canadian power has been shifting away from Parliament and into the Prime Minister’s Office.
The coalition government would have been constitutionally and democratically acceptable. It could have brought sound and stable government to Ottawa. It is shameful that Harper and his cabinet members used inflammatory language describing it as an anti-democratic coup, and all the other lies he cooked up.
Last October the Canadian people elected 308 members of Parliament. We did not elect the prime minister. In our parliamentary democracy we don’t do that. The job goes to the leader of the party with the most seats. If the party changes leader, we get a new prime minister. To keep the job in a minority government, he or she needs support from members of other parties.
Harper lost that support, so he loses the job. The next chance should go to another leader who commands the support of the majority of MPs. Nothing undemocratic about it. Nothing about the last election would have been overturned.
We might still get the coalition at the end of January. I think we should, but I also think we won’t. Michael Ignatieff, Stéphane Dion’s sudden successor, doesn’t like the idea. It is obvious that Valeriote is not keen on it either.
Last week, the opposition lined up on the platform and watched the train leave the station without them. They are unlikely to get a second chance. It looks now as though many of them don’t even want one.
It all brings us back to the word of the week. In 1791, Rabbie Burns wrote about a "parcel of rogues in a nation ". There’s a bunch of them in Ottawa, and Harper is the pro.
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