Monday, October 23, 2006

Liberals, timing and fair play

Liberals are howling* that the Prime Minister has called two by-elections to be held on the eve of the Liberals’ leadership convention.

For the record, and as a handy reminder, here are a few examples of the Liberals’ sensitive timing when it came to general elections. Not by-elections – general elections.

April, 1997: Jean Chrétien drops writ for June general election on April 27th – Orthodox Easter Sunday.

October, 2000: Jean Chrétien drops writ for November general election – four months after Stockwell Day was elected leader of the Canadian Alliance (yes, Day dared Chrétien to drop the writ, but that's not why they did it).

May, 2004: Paul Martin drops writ for June general election – two months after Stephen Harper was elected leader of the new Conservative Party (Team Martin was actually hoping to do it even earlier, but pesky sponsorship revelations kept forcing them to push the date back).

It's called the Golden Rule, boys and girls. Sucks, doesn’t it? So suck it. Hard.

Kitchener Conservative has also posted on this topic.

*Liberal party president Mike Eizinga calls it "a conniving, tactical play." Isn't Eizinga the guy for whom Team Martin booted Akash Maharaj out of the way for the party presidency? Well, I guess he would know from conniving.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, and the Liberals would HOWL if the by-elections were called in December, January or February, forcing defenseless London and Repentigny voters to go to the polls in the middle of a harsh Canadian winter (note to politicians: the voters don't give a crap, it's only the door-to-door glad-handers and sign-pounders who complain), and they would HOWL if the elections were postponed until March, or April, or May. Doesn't matter what the current government does, the lefty opposition HOWLS.

Anonymous said...

The world, and the the world of Canadian politics must absolutely stop when the libs are in a leadership contest.
After all this is the natural ruling party of Canada, you can not call a byelection during their ritualistic chest-thumping and howling-at-the-moon leadership chicken dance.

Anonymous said...

Actually, and perhaps more tellingly, Jean Chretien dropped the 1997 election writ while the province of Manitoba was neck deep in flood water. Just another example of the respect of the Liberal party for anything located west of Toronto.