p2pnet - rss feed: Is a Liberal-NDP coalition in the offing?
p2pnet news view | P2P | Politics:- Anyone who saw the English language TV debates couldn’t help but be impressed by how together Green Party leader Elizabeth May was.
She had all her facts marshalled and ready to to go — not a second of hesitation. She was confident and sure, and Green Party plans make sense.
To all appearances, she’d make an excellent leader, but although never say never, the chances of her achieving victory are slim, to say the least, which in our book, leaves it to the New Democrats to save us from another Liberal government or a majority administration led by George W Harper and his merry men.
An NDP/Green Party coalition, perhaps?
Progressive Conservative supporter Henry Jacek, a professor of political science at Hamilton’s McMaster University, has a few thoughts on another way it might go.
It’s coming down to the crunch and the NDP will be found in Newfoundland, British Columbia and Saskatchewan, “where Tory incumbents abound,” says Gloria Galloway in the Globe and Mail.
That’s because, politically, “it does the NDP little good to rob ridings from the Liberals,” she has Jacek saying.
NDP leader Jack Layton “won’t admit it, [Liberal Leader Stéphane] Dion won’t admit it, but I think their strategy has to be that, between the two of them, they have to have enough seats where they can challenge Harper on a non-confidence motion after the election,” he says in the story.
“I think what he’s hoping is that he and Dion will make a deal and that they will put a joint motion together that, if they should win it, they would then form a coalition government with Dion as prime minister and Jack a deputy prime minister.”
Jacek was, says Galloway, “referring to the fact that the party that wins the most seats Oct. 14 gets to form a government. But if a Conservative minority were then defeated in the House of Commons, the Liberals and the NDP could try to persuade the Governor-General that they were willing to co-operate, either as a coalition or with an understanding that the party who assumes power would not soon be defeated. If the two parties did not have more seats combined than the Conservatives, they would need a written agreement of co-operation from the Bloc Québécois.”
Is a Liberal-NDP coalition even a possibility? Yesterday, we posed the question to the NDP and received this by way of a response »»»
From CBC Sept 26 - hon. jack layton: (voice of translator): i’m here to run for prime minister. we told douglas it would be impossible to have medicare. here in canada. but he never accepted that proposal. he kept on going. and we will not let go. because we believe that we need the real change here in canada and this is why our candidates that are with us all across the nation are presenting a real changing option so that we can have a new democrat prime minister in ottawa.
We couldn’t easily find the CBC story/program from which the quote emanates, but we guess it means an NDP/Liberal government isn’t high on lists of likely outcomes.
The Globe and Mail was, however, rather more successful, with NDP communication director Brad Legine summing up like this:
“The great thing about … our democracy is it’s not up to political science professors to pick the prime minister; it’s up to Canadians to pick the prime minister.”
We’d go even further. IOHO, it’s up to young Canadians to make the difference.
So if that’s you, no matter which way you go, get out there and vote.
Globe and Mail - The NDP: a Liberal coalition?, October 4, 2008
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