The US Election race is heating up with bad-boy Karl Rove conceding that even John McCain has crossed the line in his Republican ads against Obama. Meanwhile, our Canadian Federal Election is coming up in less than a month (October 14th).
In 2006 shortly after Stephen Harper became Prime Minister, he passed a law that ensures election dates are fixed, and that the next election would be in October 2009. The law would prevent the Prime Minister (i.e. himself) from calling an election in between this fixed period.
At the time, Harper claimed (From this 2006 article on CBC):
“Fixed election dates prevent governments from calling snap elections for short-term political advantage. They level the playing field for all parties and the rules are clear for everybody.”“Because the government could be defeated in the Commons before the end of a four-year term, “the will of a majority in Parliament will always prevail,” he said.
“But fixed election dates stop leaders from trying to manipulate the calendar simply for partisan political advantage.”
Now that Harper has broken his own law and done exactly what he was trying to prevent when he created the law, I’m left to wonder whether his word can even be trusted.
Meanwhile, down South, John McCain has shot himself in the foot by choosing Sarah Palin for his running mate. He was obviously trying to capitalize on the Clinton votes by taking in one Sarah Palin, but her inexperience and hard-line stance is coming back to bite him. It now appears that Palin is more attractive to the ultra religious right-wing voters than the moderates that would have supported Clinton (These are the ones McCain was most likely targeting before he made his hasty decision to take in Palin).
Both elections are sure to be interesting episodes, with the US election being one of the most important elections ever.
Watch Matt Damon share my concern over the possibility of Palin being President: