For the first time in 11 weeks, we’re not being prompted, cajoled, urged, threatened, shamed, yelled at, terrified, tricked, pushed, persuaded, pummeled or convinced to vote for one party or another.
Isn’t the silence refreshing?
This is being written Monday afternoon before the polls closed. The tail end of Monday or wee small hours of Tuesday are not the friends of press times.
Chatham Mazda from Chatham Voice on Vimeo.
Regardless of whose comments you read on chathamvoice.com Tuesday, the message is the same. The election is over.
We first need to thank Dave, Katie, Mark and Tony for running in Chatham-Kent-Leamington and Bev, Jim, Ken and Rex for running in Lambton-Kent-Middlesex.
We’re using their first names to remind you that they’re real people, people who have put their lives on hold while they tried to convince us that their ideas of government are the ones that should be put into effect.
It’s not an easy thing to do in these days of politics as blood sport. This was a particularly nasty campaign and if there’s one thing we can take away from this it’s that we don’t have to do things this way.
The bottom line is that the right party won. That’s the way it is in a democracy. The party that can connect with voters and make them believe they have solutions to our problems gets to govern.
At least that’s the way it always worked until about a decade ago when a group of American obstructionists who couldn’t elect a president decided to put their wishes and needs ahead of a nation’s.
They regularly vote against everything and use every procedural tool at their disposal to bring the government, and democracy, to a halt.
Given the fact that our election campaigns are beginning to resemble the spending orgies of hate that mark American politics, we have a right to be concerned.
In our parliamentary system, the party that doesn’t win is called the Official Opposition, or in a different era, Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.
The word loyal is an important one. We need politicians who recognize and respect the will of the people. They need to keep a watchful eye on the government but with the betterment of the country in mind, not their own personal agendas.
In short, we need to act like Canadians.
