Thank the powers that the stupid election is over after today. After listening to a bunch of unworthy leaders tell everyone why they are better than the other guy for the longest campaign I can remember, its finally time for them to get our of my face.
Of course, not a single decent leader is up for the top job. They’re all grumpy old men with hidden agendas and jowls. The incumbent Prime Minister was the finance minister for the most corrupt party in Canadian history. The likely successor is a right wing, fag-hating neo-con that will sell us down the Mississippi river to the Bush government faster than he’ll be able to repeal our progressive same-sex marriage laws. He also intends to nationalize every womb in Canada.
Then there’s the “smart” choice, what we here call the NDP (National Democratic Party) and the rest of the world would call the Labour party. The leader of THAT party has a mustache. Nobody in western politics gets elected while in possession of a mustache. And lets not forget the “Bloc,” a party bent on making the province of Quebec a country of its own.
Then we have the full gamut of insignificant parties. There’s the Green party with its environmental agenda that nobody can take seriously because there’s not financial support structure to back up their ambitious plans. There’s the Christian Heritage Party, which nobody even understands.
The (un)usual suspects, bearing red stars and arguing with each other are the Marxist-Leninist party and the Communist party of Canada. If only they would realize they have identical hopeless agendas, they could get off the ballot and save us all grief.
The upshot is that we have two major national parties and a gaggle of tiny ankle-biter parties mucking up the stew. Because Canada lacks proportional voting, it means that in many ridings, a vote as low as 15% can result in a some idiot who can’t tie his or her own shoes representing the will of tens (or hundreds) of thousands of people.
Democracy my ass.