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Monday 14, 2005 |
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On the other side of the House...
by Angelo Persichilli
THE HILL TIMES
'That's not the way we do politics on
this side of the House," is the most popular response from Liberal Cabinet
ministers when they answer questions from Conservative MPs during the daily
45-minute Question Period in the House of Commons, otherwise. known as a
televised free-for-all. The Libs most always sidestep the content of
Conservatives' questions and focus instead on delivering political character
assassinations of the opposition. They portray the Conservative Party MPs as
being members of a political organization against democracy, against
freedom, as war-mongers, against helping the poor, against the weak. Pretty
soon, they'll be portraying the Conservatives as childeaters. If a
Conservative MP asks a Liberal, "What's the time?" the Lib response is bound
to be that the Conservative is "intruding into the privacy of a Canadian
citizen," or, that the Conservative is trying to mug them.
However, when the Libs
really want to be nasty with the people "on the other side of the House,"
they often refer to them as "members of the Alliance Conservative Party."
"Mr. Speaker, - they proudly say - that's not the way we do politics on
this side of the House." Oh, really? They may be doing things differently
than the Conservatives, but if they still will be doing it in the future, it
is only because those "devilish" people "on the other side of the House"
will allow them.
The Conservatives are so
bad that, guess what? They like the Liberal budget! But the amateurish
Liberal response tactics (if you don't like the message, shoot the
messenger) isn't new, or the best expression of what politics is all about.
It's just the best way for weak people to cover up for their own misery.
And, sometimes, it works too.
Prime Minister Paul Martin
said it well at the beginning of his speech at the last Liberal convention.
Referring to the last campaign, he said that the first two weeks were not
that fun, things improved during the last two weeks. And the reason is
simple: they stopped talking about them and started demonizing their
opponents.
I arrived in Canada in
1975, meaning that I had the opportunity to experience this kind of
scaremongering politics in Italy. Christian Democrats, who had the help of
some fringe political organizations, were able to hold onto power for almost
half a century by scaring the electorate, including myself, into thinking
there was no alternative to them. They convinced, right or wrongly, the
majority of the Italian electorate that the alternatives were "the Fascists
on the right and the Communists on the left." Their electoral platform was
never about them, always about the opposition. It took the collapse of the
Soviet Union to destroy their "electoral" programs and Judge Antonio Di
Pietro and his colleagues, to expose the corruption of a system that
deprived the Italian people to freely express their vote for almost half a
century.
It is a tactic I still
resent because they stole from me the right to vote "for someone" and subtly
forced me to vote "against someone." Nonetheless, they still had the
political dignity to refuse the votes from" the other side of the House" to
stay in power. Whenever the government was winning the "confidence vote"
with the help of the "Fascists" or the "Communists", the government was
resigning.
I agree with the criticism
from Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe and NDP leader Jack Layton:
Liberals can't have it both ways.
Building a country is not
a search-and-destroy business-it's about ideas and, most of all, integrity
and honesty. Putting the government in the hands of people you despise, is
hardly the best way to do politics.
Mathematics is a perfect
science, they say; however, numbers can lie.
John Turner won his
convention in 1986 with almost 80 per cent of the votes from the Liberal
delegates. We later know he ended up like Julius Caesar.
Jean Chr6tien had more
than 90 per cent in the 2000 leadership review vote-he is still in the
recovery room of the Constellation Hotel.
If Paul Martin believes he
has his party behind him because he's got "almost" 90 per cent, meaning less
than Jean Chrétien, in the Ottawa convention, I believe he has to reassess
his political future.
Liberal policy
conventions, even leadership conventions, used to be a celebration of
liberalism; we were used to seeing the grassroots celebrating their leaders
and their party. And Liberal conventions were also used as an opportunity to
parade the Liberal premiers and provincial leaders from all over the
Country.
The Liberals' policy
convention in Ottawa had none of this. Even the core vote of the Liberal
Party., ethno-cultural communities, had a stingy presence. Someone told me
that there were more ministers of Italian origin than delegates from the
Italian-Canadian community. The Liberal premiers were noticed for their
absence, no provincial ministers, only a handful of Members of the
provincial Parliaments. And there is no shortage of Liberal premiers in this
country: in fact, the three major Provinces have liberal premiers at the top
of their governments.
And those "Liberal
solitudes" were noticeable also during last week's Heritage Dinner, held by
Ontario provincial Liberals. There was almost no presence from Ottawa. Sure,
the feds were busy with the confidence vote on the budget: but it's a lame
excuse; they knew that Mr. Harper and his MPs were on hand to help them out.
As you can see, the devil
"on the other side of the House" is not always that ugly, as they say. But
if it is, they should resign and ask for help from the people and not from
"the devil". |
