David Emerson: Media Watch
Media Highlights for Wednesday March 22 2006
Media Watch is updated through the day until the end of the day.
March 22 (Gary Mason, The Globe and Mail) Emerson gets votes for de-election
Mike Watkins, a card-carrying Conservative and one of the principals behind the De-Elect Emerson campaign, isn’t concerned that Ethics Commissioner Bernard Shapiro’s ruling this week clearing Mr. Emerson and Prime Minister Stephen Harper of wrongdoing in the party switching will release steam from the de-elect movement.
“Given Mr. Shapiro’s very limited mandate, I’m not surprised by the decision,” Mr. Watkins said yesterday. “I don’t think anyone expected anything different. If anything, it will make people realize there really isn’t anybody in government looking after democracy.”
Which means of course that the people have to carry this task forward themselves.
That said, I don’t think the protests have been a waste of time. It would be wonderful if the cries of disapproval emanating from Vancouver Kingsway laid the foundation for a broader movement calling for changes to federal laws that would prevent this sort of thing from happening again.
David Emerson cheated the 20,064 people who cast their ballots for him out of their vote. Democracy doesn’t, well, shouldn’t work that way.
This issue needs to be studied and addressed, and if the people of Vancouver Kingsway become the catalyst for the legislative changes necessary to ensure this never happens again, then their protest will have been worth it.
This is certainly the goal of many that are involved – demonstrate to politicians that there is a terrible price to pay if they debase our democracy, and use this pressure to push for lasting change. However no one ought characterize a desire for longer-term solutions as a weakening of resolve for those involved in the “de-elect” movement. Politicians who underestimate the tenacity of those who are calling for Emerson’s resignation do so at their own risk, and will themselves eventually pay a price for their tacit or explicit support for Emerson and Harper in this affair.
April 2006 (Ken Alexander – Editor, The Walrus) Election After-Math
But Mr. Harper did his math post-election. “Disallow the Liberal/Bloc potential by bribing Mr. Emerson—whose Vancouver riding supported us with a whopping 19 percent—to cross the floor. What is one Cabinet position for a turncoat worth?” Harper must have thought. “The natural governing party, the Liberals, asked such questions for years. It served them well and kept us in the principled wilderness. Well, my new hedonic calculus, my will to power, now dictates that I too can hold the electorate in contempt, that voting is nothing but a parlour game that I control.”