Monday, December 1, 2008

Harper's hypocrisy

Now, I try to remain relatively non-partisan on here, but at times partisan criticism is unavoidable. And I don't mean to suggest with this post that the other parties and leaders are above hypocrisy, forgetting history or going back on their word. But this is getting to be a bit much. Here are three blatant cases of hypocrisy from Stephen Harper and the Conservatives:

1) Making it law that elections would happen on fixed dates, and stating that they shouldn't be called for purely political reasons. This was standard Chretien procedure that the Conservatives decried and then made illegal. "Fixed election dates stop leaders from trying to manipulate the calendar simply for partisan political advantage," our PM said. Then he went ahead and did it anyway.

2) Decrying the proposed Liberal-NDP-(Bloc) coalition as undemocratic, decrying the two parties for jumping in bed with the "separatists", and crying foul because the NDP and Bloc discussed the possibility of a coalition before the current crisis. Um, Sept. 9th, 2004, anyone? A letter was sent to then G-G Adrienne Clarkson asking her to consider dissolving Parliament (Martin's minority government was about to take power) before it had even started, and that the opposition parties had been "in close consultation"; this letter was signed by Jack Layton, Gilles Duceppe and...wait for it....Stephen Harper! And Mr. Harper, it's part of our democratic system.

3) Mocking the NDP's association with the Liberals. From today in the House: “Why should anybody have confidence in the leader of a party who would agree to fold his own party into another party?” Can he be serious? Is he just mocking Peter McKay outright? Doesn't he remember being intimately involved in the formation of his own party?

Does this man have no sense of history? Or does he think we just don't remember any of it? Bizarre.

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