Log No 195: Why are our political leaders powerless to get rid of Harper?

On July 7, in an article posted on a Web site I kept in anther place, I posted the article reprinted below, asking where are the political leaders who have the courage to act to get rid of Stephen Harper?

I sent copies to a number of political leaders of the three non-Conservative parties, but only one of them, Libby Davies, of the NDP, has even deigned to reply to my question.

As far as the others --- Gerard Kennedy of the Liberals, Jack Layton and Olivia Chow of the NDP, Gilles Duceppe and Meili Faille of the Bloc Quebecois --- are concerned, this question of getting rid of Harper seems to be of complete disinterest.

One of the points I made in my piece was that the anti-Conservative forces have the votes, as given in the election, and the seats in the House of Commons, to beat Harper and throw him out of office. In other words they have a mandate from the Canadian public, earned democratically.

They were intending to do just that until Michael Ignatieff got rid of Stephan Dion as leader of the Liberals, after which he immediately discovered a disinclination to become Prime Minister.

Unfortumately, Ignatieff seems to have placed a hex on our Members of Parliament, who now apparently don’t have a modicum of guts between them.

Nor do they understand how urgent it is to bring this appalling right-wing government crashing to defeat at the first available opportunity, like tomorrow.

Well, what can a mere voter do?

Here is the piece I wrote on July 7:

Where the hell are the political leaders who care enough about the country to get rid of Harper, as they have the means to do?

Aware that I have been writing about marginal subjects recently, I am brought up short against one overwhelming fact of Canadian political life: that we have an urgent need to try, somehow, to remove this Harper government before they have the opportunity to irrevocably change this country into a little-USA.

Although I have always supported the New Democratic Party, recent events make it clear that this party by itself cannot do the job.

What is needed is what Stephan Dion, as leader of the Liberals, agreed with the NDP, and, more marginally, with the Bloc Quebecois: between them, these three parties have the votes, both electoral votes and in members in the House of Commons, to topple the Tories, and they were ready to do it until Michael Ignatieff displaced Dion, and announced his disinclination to become Prime Minister.

What sort of politician, with the Prime Ministership in his hand, says, “No thanks, I would rather not?”

Therefore, it seems that to get rid of this intellectual Hamlet should be one of the first measures taken in our journey to Harper displacement.

It completely baffles me that the progressive-minded thinkers among the Liberal and NDP MPs have accepted so tamely to support Harper, and abandon their winning coalition idea.

The only explanation is that they have been intimidated by the hectoring of the press, which immediately coalesced around Harper when his job was threatened, and so blackened the very idea of coalition as to force Dion out of office.

The Opposition politicians need reminding that the press is not a neutral observer of events: it is owned by wealthy persons or companies, and it serves the interest of the wealthy, who are today nakedly running our societies. And, unless people have forgotten, the Conservative government is at the service of these same wealth-owners.

Harper’s mantra, repeated on one of his recent overseas trips, is that “losers don’t form governments.” He should tell it to the Swedes. As I have remarked many times in these columns, in the 1960s I heard the Swedish Prime Minister, Tage Erlander, congratulate the recently triumphant British Labour Party on its immense majority of four (out of a House of more than 600), and add that he himself had never had a majority in all his many years in office.

If ever there was a lesson to be learned about politics, it was from Mr. Erlander’s reminder. While never having had a majority, his long tenure as Prime Minister had effectively done two things: it had transformed the social situation within Sweden, and it had created a consensus about the route forward, a route that has made Sweden one of the world’s most successful and humane countries.

It is obvious that Canada today has a body of majority opinion that would make a similar result possible, if only our politicians could organize for that opinion --- expressed in a majority of votes at general elections --- to be turned into effective government.

It is a terrible failure of imagination by our political leaders that Harper is even in power today. Where the hell are the leaders who care enough about the country to get rid of this plague on our politics?

Where the hell are the political leaders who care enough about the country to get rid of Harper, as they have the means to do

Aware that I have been writing about marginal subjects recently, I am brought up short against one overwhelming fact Canadian political life: that we have an urgent need to try, somehow, to remove this Harper government before they have the opportunity to irrevocably change this country into a little-USA.

Although I have always supported the New Democratic Party, recent events make it clear that this party by itself cannot do the job.

What is needed is what Stephan Dion, as leader of the Liberals, agreed with the NDP, and, more marginally, with the Bloc Quebecois: between them, these three parties have the votes, both electoral votes and in members in the House of Commons, to topple the Tories, and they were ready to do it until Michael Ignatieff displaced Dion, and announced his disinclination to become Prime Minister.

What sort of politician, with the Prime Ministership in his hand, says, “No thanks, I would rather not?”

Therefore, it seems that to get rid of this intellectual Hamlet should be one of the first measures taken in our journey to Harper displacement.

It completely baffles me that the progressive-minded thinkers among the Liberal and NDP MPs have accepted so tamely supporting Harper, and abandoning their winning coalition idea.

The only explanation is that they have been intimidated by the hectoring of the press, which immediately coalesced around Harper when his job was threatened, and so blackened the very idea of coalition as to force Dion out of office.

They need reminding that the press is not a neutral observer of events: it is owned by wealthy persons or companies, and it serves the interest of the wealthy, who are today nakedly running our societies. And, unless people have forgotten, the Conservative government is at the service of these same wealth-owners

Harper’s mantra, repeated on one of his recent overseas trips, is that “losers don’t form governments.” He should tell it to the Swedes. As I have remarked many times in these columns, in the 1960s I heard the Swedish Prime Minister, Tage Erlander, congratulate the recently triumphant British Labour Party on its immense majority of four (out of a House of more than 600), and add that he himself had never had a majority in all his many years in office.

If ever there was a lesson to be learned about politics, it was from Mr. Erlander’s reminder. While never having had a majority, his long tenure as Prime Minister had effectively done two things: it had transformed the social situation within Sweden, and it had created a consensus about the route forward, a route that has made Sweden one of the world’s most successful and humane countries.

It is obvious that Canada today has a body of majority opinion that would make a similar result possible, if only our politicians could organize for that opinion --- expressed in a majority of votes at general elections --- to be turned into effective government.

It is a terrible failure of imagination by our political leaders that Harper is even in power today. Where the hell are the leaders who care enough about the country to get rid of this plague on our politics?