Crawl Across the Ocean

Thursday, December 04, 2008

With a Whimper

So, the latest round of political nonsense, well summarized here by The Economist, ends with the proroguing of Canadian parliament.

The thing that surprised me was to hear that the request Harper made of the Governor General - to shut down parliament rather than lose a confidence vote - was literally unprecedented in the history of parliamentary democracies. All those different parliamentary democracies out there, and all the hundreds of years they've been around and Stephen Harper is the first leader to cling to power so tightly, and respect tradition so little, that he would hide behind the Governor General instead of standing like a man to face a vote in the house.

I don't know whether to be impressed by such a long run of honourable behaviour by politicians, or to be saddened that it came to an end in this manner, at this time, in this place.

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1 Comments:

  • The question is, what does he want to wait for?? One of the opposing parties finally to agree with his budget proposal? Bloc? Hardly...
    Our country is slowly slipping into democratic chaos. No matter if it's today, or in January - if Harper loses, we can await very unstable coalition, which will sooner or later collapse. If he wins, this all this situation will repeat again very soon. So finally, we are heading to new election anyway. But - are the results going to be different? Not much. It's a vicious circle...
    Best wishes
    Jay

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:40 AM  

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