Reasonable men and election

Everybody says that they don’t want one. Everybody talks about it. First, it was Michael Ignatieff’s turn. The leader of the Liberal party and the official Leader of the Opposition in one promised to deliver his verdict on the government’s economic report card on Monday. This was expected to be also the verdict on the future of the Stephen Harper’s Conservative government.

The former happened, the latter too. Sort of. A semantic decomposition of the Harper’s report card was rather brief – if the funds for infrastructure investments had been authorized, committed and flowing it didn’t necessarily mean that the money were already there. A clear message was sent on the employment insurance too.

The political part of the message was less plain. Sticking to his trademark, Ignatieff was as direct as two fighting pretzels when it came to answering the question whether he’s willing to bring the government down in the Friday’s vote and trigger an election.

Despite that, the message to the other side of the House of Commons was loud and clear: I don’t want an election, but your report is not adequate and I do have responsibility. But rather than threatening Harper with an early election and being the one who initiated it, Ignatieff played the ball to the other side leaving it up to Harper to decide. That left Harper with the only reasonable option. To react and, in the same pretzel fashion, agree to talk to the leader opposition.

Harper is apparently coming to terms with the idea that the leader of a minority government has a very limited set of options available to keep the job. And Ignatieff made that clear. It’s Harper’s responsibility to make sure the Government has the confidence of the House and it’s the Harper’s responsibility to seek the support of the opposition. Had he chosen to ignore Ignatieff, he would have turned himself into the man who triggered an election nobody wanted.

By the way, Harper made a big deal out of the fact that Ignatieff didn’t ask those question during the Question Period in the House. In fact, pretty much everybody expected the Leader of the Opposition to do so. But by refraining from triggering a fierce showdown over a two-sword-length wide demarcation line in the House, Ignatieff forced Harper, who simply had to react, to go the National Press Theater, which is an environment the Prime Minister doesn’t really like.

I’m a reasonable man, said Ignatieff to avoid being the one who triggered an election. I’m a reasonable man, said Harper to avoid being the one who triggered an election. Nobody wants it. But apparently, Harper doesn’t want it more. Which gives a tiny little edge to Ignatieff. Let’s see how the expected meeting between the two goes.

Count Ignatieff. In.

There will be many lines along which the Conservatives will attack the Liberals in the next election campaign but one will stand out. Having an extensive foreign experience, being known and respected abroad can be played out as a sign that a person with such characteristic is not a good Canadian. Read any Internet forum and the international experience of the new Liberal Party leader emerges as the main objection that disqualifies him from being a prime minister in the eyes of many Canadians. They call it “he lived abroad”. The official campaign will not be different.

Targeting a single person for what and who they are has become a standard of the Conservatives’ partisan politics. “Can you imagine a man, who spent years outside Canada to be a prime minister of this country?” will be a follow-up on the last year’s mantra “Can you imagine Stephan Dion to be your prime minister?”. Of course, Canadians do no vote for a prime minister but a potentially decisive number of Canadians does hold a belief that they do as was demonstrated last year during the parliament crisis.

Another point is nationalism. Stephen Harper was very quick in hitting on the very dangerous pseudo-patriotic string during the last year’s parliamentary crisis, the attack that peaked with a pure lie. Harper claimed that the three political leaders who signed the coalition treaty didn’t do so with a Canadian flag in the background. It was pathetic, sure, but heyday patriots bought it as well as a even more pathetic Harper’s follow up (flags pushed aside). Simplifying is the essence of politics but at times it borders on primitivism.

Finally, the Conservatives has become a one-man party over the past few years and simply do not have a candidate that would be on par with Michael Ignatieff. Personal attack, beyond the usual campaign standards, is inevitable.

Harper is a brilliant politician, a master of partisan politics, of the realpolitik. Otherwise he wouldn’t be able to sustain his primeministership for so long with a minority government. But his ability as prime minister ends with divide et impera. And the trouble with this tactics is it works only for Harper and his immediate clique in the Conservative party.

Ignatieff said something very similar at the Liberals’ convention over the weekend when he sent a message directly to Stephen Harper. “For three years you have played province against province, group against group, region against region and individual against individual. When your power was threatened last November, you unleashed a national unity crisis and you saved yourself only by sending Parliament home.”

This, however, is not a mere political, partisan statement. This is a political analysis. But the phrasing is spot on, target audience is Canadian public at its most inclusive definition. Ignatieff is occasionally criticized for being too academic, too scientific and too elitist. He is all those things and it is appreciated where and when necessary. But in Vancouver he proved more-less conclusively that there is a different Ignatieff. The fact that the Conservatives are already targeting his international experience via viral Internet campaign is a definitive proof that Ignatieff and the Liberal party are on the right track. And the only alternative the Conservatives can offer is blatant nationalism.

Conquering West or conquering rural Canada?

While some people were busy falling in love over the Valentine weekend, Canadian Liberals revealed their crush on the West. Or at least that was the idea. Michael Ignatieff went to Saskatchewan, for the first time as the leader of the Liberal Party, with the clear message. The party must embrace the West, it cannot afford to succumb to temptation to run against it, against what it represents. Which means, cowboy values aside, the energy sector, oil, drilling and perceived capitalism.

Ignatieff has very good reasons for the love-thy-enemy approach. Poor showing in the last federal elections cost the Liberals 26 seats in the House. They lost Ontario, which certainly hurt, but west of the Canada’s largest province they managed to get exactly 7 seats – one in Manitoba, one in Saskatchewan and five in British Columbia. And zero seats in Alberta. Of course, the seat math distorts the real vote distribution due to the natural democratic deficit of Canadian first-past-the-post election system. Proportional vote would have resulted in a very different House of Commons.

Still, the Liberals would have lost. The Green Shift, or carbon tax plan, which was the lead of the Liberal’s campaign didn’t go down well in oil-rich provinces, for a start, not many people really knew what it was all about and second, it came from the Liberal party, therefore it is probably a socialist idea trying to undermine western capitalism. There’s no love lost and, occasionally, there are talks about Western Canada splitting from the rest of the country. Many dismiss the idea as too marginal, others say that it’s not meant for real anyway, and point out to the Quebec’s secessionist movement instead. With the Bloc Québécois, it is rather simple. Everybody agrees it’s a one province party. They don’t campaign outside Quebec so while other parties’ leaders and candidates are busy flying across 4 and half timezones, Bloc’s folks are enjoying bus trips within the province.

The Bloc Québécois is the only province-based party but they’re certainly not the only regional one. The Conservatives dominate in the West and while they’re not a single-region party, the West is certainly a single-party region. Unlike Quebec with surprisingly inspirational popular vote distribution (Bloc – 38.1%, Liberals – 23.7%, Conservatives – 21.7%, NDP – 12.1%). Compare that to Saskatchewan (Conservatives – 53.7%) and Alberta (Conservatives 64.6%)…

The Liberals were pushed, with the great help from themselves, out of the West. But they also lost touch with the most of Canada. With few exceptions, their main sources of votes were city centres. Urban jungle seems to be the winning battleground but there’s still Canada beyond the downtown quarters.

That Canada is very different. It may not have the western energy mentality, but it’s certainly less academic about everyday life. Embracing the West is good, but embracing Canada would be even better, for the Liberals and for the country. Michael Ignatieff, the impersonation of intellectual powers and academia, must find the way how to embrace the whole country without becoming Stephen Harper in the process.

Hollow Men of the Liberal Party

Stéphane Dion is stepping down. Again. I think only Bill Gates announced stepping down more times, using a “salami method” to slowly, gradually, post by post, withdraw from the company he loved so much, the company damned so many times by too many. Each time, most of the press provided backing vocals singing praises and preaching the gospel of Gates.

Dion’s second departure, sort of announced on Monday, will be less pompous, think of whimper, not of a bang. The world will not end, only the hollow men of the Liberal party will have less time to think about the future of the party they helped to damage.

After the federal election on October 14, Dion announced he would step down. In May. Inexorable logic of political cause and the effect, however, suggests that the unsuccessful election leader steps down immediately If he did, the Liberals would have had one less problem to solve. But it’s all academic now.

Dominic LeBlanc, Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae showed the much needed unity in the hour of need and supported Dion on the day the Coalition agreement was signed. And they should have maintained that position whether the parliament was prorogued or not. From a few-days distance it seems they could have delay the leadership race until after the overall political situation would have had stabilized, but who could have known that the Governor General would throw democracy out of the window and give prime ministers powers to shut down parliament any time they’d face a no-confidence vote.

Still, while the Liberals’ enemy was tearing the country apart alongside anglo-franco and east-west lines, instead of showing the much needed unity of the party for the sake of the country, they went on to squabble over the leadership. Yes, supporting Dion wasn’t the first choice of many, but it would be lesser of two evils. That’s what parties do to show the unity and to come to power. It requires both maturity and ability to control one’s personal ambitions. When forming coalitions, people swallow their prides, forget past fights, but apparently it’s easier to forgive your political opponents than to get on with your party comrades.

The Liberals had the chance to use the parliamentary crisis to renew the sense of leadership they shattered during the federal election campaign. Instead, they’re using the salami method to deconstruct their own party. After arguing over the leader, they are now arguing over how to chose one. Instead of debating policies, they debate the ways how their party should work.

This makes Prime Minister Harper the happiest person in Canada. It’s not that he managed to beat the Liberals, his political genius stems from him being an opportunistic authoritarian rather than a brilliant super-strategist who “planned all of this”. The Liberals made him blink, blink big, and then stopped mid-way. Harper didn’t really win, but the Liberals have surely lost. Not with a bang. With a whimper.

(Written for World Business Press Online)

Canadian Economic update triggers election talk

Despite pretty much everybody in Canada and abroad predicting recession and budget deficit, Canadian Government thinks otherwise. The Economic and Fiscal Statement presented in Ottawa on Thursday by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty still predicts growth. The 2008/2009 fiscal year should end up $0.8 billion in black. Prediction for the next two years? $0.1 billion. That’s without guarantees. After all the talk about “technical recession” and shifting attitudes towards deficits this sounds more like government’s reluctance to put the R and D words on paper.

On the more positive note, the government wants to guarantee credits flow to both businesses and individuals, decrease corporate taxes, increase no-tax income level, establish new tax-free savings account, there was also a good news for companies’ pension schemes, and a confirmation of plans to invest into infrastructure. The Conservatives’ government is encouraging provinces to replace sales-tax with VAT harmonized with the federal tax and urges them to “achieve their goal of amending the Agreement on Internal Trade by January 1, 2009 so as to achieve “full mobility for all Canadians” by April 1, 2009. This should remove many of the trade barriers and employment certification requirements among the provinces which often makes it easier to do business with the USA than with the neighboring Canadian province and also allow for more foreign investments. Government also states that it is good idea to talk to professional organization that regulate some section of the labour market to let much needed “skilled immigrant workers” into Canada. However, the Report is scarce on details and doesn’t promise any concrete action.

Government spending will be cut, because as the Report says, “we cannot ask Canadians to tighten their belts during tougher times without looking into the mirror”. That would be nice if the new Harper’s government hasn’t increased in size from 31 to 38.

The Report confirmed speculations about a controversial reform of federal financing to political parties. Under current regulations, federal parties receive, among other means, a quarterly subsidy equaling $1.75 per vote they got in the election. This will be eliminated from April 1, 2009. The Conservatives, as the ruling party, say that it will hurt them most. Mathematics says it’s true. However, the Conservative party is the richest one in Canada, while the Liberals are really struggling financially. NDP leader Jack Layton had every reason to accuse Conservatives of “attacking democracy”. Because this is exactly what Harper is doing – he tries to weaken his political opponents financially knowing that the reform will hurt them most.

All Canadian opposition parties declared that they would vote against the government’s update. According to the New Democratic Party, the Update is a “failure” that will not stimulate economy. Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe declared it wasn’t an economic statement but an “énoncé idéologique”. The Leader of the Opposition, Liberal Party’s Stéphane Dion said that the announcement “leaves Canada ill-prepared to face economic challenges”. Opposition’s NO could result in yet another election. Another option is a coalition government of opposition parties. The buzz is already going around the House of Commons.

(Written for World Business Press Online)

Ignatieff for … the Liberal Party leader

Following a disappointing defeat in the October general election, Liberal Party’s leader Stephane Dion announced that he would step down at the next convention. During the campaign, Dion was impersonation of a reluctant leader and unfortunately he played the role of university professor way too often. Whether this was intentional or unavoidable, is up for a discussion. His less then perfect command of English contributed to the overall non-political image.

In its quest for the new leader that would reverse their fortunes, the Liberal party must find someone who will be a direct opposite of Stephen Harper. The Conservatives’ leader Stephan Harper is in many ways politically perfect – impersonal, ideology driven leader, a populist here and there, but generally sterilely average without a long term vision for the country.

Liberals have to choose a leader that will be able to unite the party. This often leads to electing a person who’s sufficiently weak to absorb individual fractions’ influences. Obviously, this is a method that may work for a while but in the long run A) it only delays inevitable disintegration of the party, and B) it is the worst way to provide party with a leader capable of challenging political opponents during the next election and leading Canada.

After Michael Ignatieff announced on Thursday that he would run for the Liberal party leadership, the party got exactly what it needed. Ignatieff’s career and life are most impressive. His international experience shouldn’t be treated as suspicious and nobody should question whether he’s a real Canadian.

Ignatieff is an accomplished historian, journalist, writer and politician, in any order, which makes him perfectly suitable for leading not just the Liberal Party, but Canada as well. In the recent days, amidst international effort to stop or at least slow down the recession, Canada has become a role model for the sound economy. Canadian leader without ideological ballast and international credibility will be the one who the world will surely listen to.

(Written for World Business Press Online)