A difficult decision
Published Monday October 13th, 2008
In some ways, this is a difficult time for this country to hold a federal election.
The most pressing issue - the financial meltdown - has been identified as a huge pocketbook issue in this country only during the past week. And yet, voters are asked to trust a political party to lead the response, despite the fact nobody really knows the true depth of the problems yet. This takes trust.
But turn that around and it may be the best time for an election. The winner can provide definitive direction to handle the situation.
This campaign was born when our voting population probably knew more about U.S. vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin than Green party Leader Elizabeth May, or perhaps even Liberal Leader Stephane Dion.
It may have failed to really capture the voter's spirit. It seems the Conservative party itself wasn't paying too much attention either.
In an arrogant move, the Conservatives didn't even release their party platform until one week before the vote. We guess they felt they didn't need to.
If you are right-leaning in your politics, no doubt you will want to return Stephen Harper and the Tories to a position of power.
If you are left-leaning in your politics, you have a problem. The left vote may be fractured in this country, with different geographical pockets of strength for various parties.
The addition of the Green party only muddies the picture and probably hurts Liberal chances more than anything.
We suggest the past few days have determined the Conservatives will return to power - and the split on the left between Liberals, NDP and Greens might well catapult the Conservatives into a majority situation.
We suggest Harper's political personality is arrogant. Yet he has made it clear the best chance to address riding issues is to vote for the party that forms the government.
We see no one able to challenge Harper's government and we fear the results of this election will place the leaders of one if not two of the other major parties in question. Time spent fighting internal party politics is not time spent serving the people.
We urge everyone to vote with your conscience. We suggest - with many reservations - a Conservative vote will serve this region best.
Most of all we urge you to vote. Be it our role in Afghanistan, the economy, health care, tolerance or infrastructure, there are critical issues affecting us all.
And if this election ends with a low voter turnout, we suggest a crisis of voter apathy must be moved to the top of our vast list of challenges.
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Comments (6)
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You state that the opposition parties will split the non-Conservative vote and give the Conservatives a majority in the House, yet you deem that we should vote Conservative for the sake of our region? Won't that hand them the same majority? How hypocritically self-righteous of you to determine how we should vote.
Perhaps we could have saved our country millions of dollars and saved the populous the wasted effort of casting a ballot by handing our vote over to the editors. Clearly, in their infinite wisdom, they are much suited for the task than "we" are.
Sorry, but that's one load of bull that I'm not buying.
Given that there is only a 5% difference between the leading parties, and the Conservatives only have the support of 1/3 of Canadians, how can you say that they deserve a majority? A minority government works to keep the ruling party in check, while a majority Conservative government would give them carte blanche without having to keep their arrogance (referenced twice in the original article) reigned in.
To quote Harper himself, they're "not worth the risk".