Thursday, December 4, 2008

Stephen Harper is unworthy to be Prime Minister

Presume for a moment that the Governor General agrees to Stephen Harper’s request to prorogue the House of Commons this morning.

If Stephen Harper continues as Prime Minister and continues trying “to make parliament work” in the adversarial and rabidly partisan fashion to which he is accustomed (everything we know about his character tells us he will) what prevents us from coming back to this precise moment weeks or months from now?

As Conservative MP Laurie Hawn conceded this morning on CBC Radio, "I will admit that there were things in the economic statement that were needlessly provocative."

Unfortunately it’s as easy for Conservatives to repent right now for this cataclysmic misjudgement as it is to seize the opportunity to do the exact same thing when the mood next strikes them.

Meaning that as long as Stephen Harper is in the Prime Minister’s office every economic statement, every budget, every throne speech and every vote of confidence will become another occasion to blackmail concessions from the opposition.

This is a moment in history to leave the politics at the door and yet Stephen Harper is a man overburdened with wiretapping, mean-spiritedness, regional divisiveness and deliberate misrepresentation in the disreputable name of parochial partisanship.

Stephen Harper has proven himself unworthy to be Prime Minister.

1 comment:

Idealistic Pragmatist said...

Wow, Laurie Hawn said that? If there's ever been a definition of "needlessly provocative," it's Laurie Hawn.