Political robots and campaign cock-ups: How can we find meaning in N.L.'s weirdest election?
With our weather alone, you'd think N.L. would have a system for emergency delays of an election
This column is an opinion by St. John's writer Edward Riche. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.
Local journos and academics have struggled in the past weeks to make sense of Newfoundland and Labrador's weird, protracted provincial election and speculate on its consequences. Much of that analysis came to a fuzzy foregone conclusion; that the contest, in some undefined way, further damaged our already shit-hauled democracy. That might be the case but it's not testable.
Politics isn't a science, it's a dark art.
It is better explained by metaphor, satire and pornographic cartoon than by any theory. When Moya Greene asks that Memorial University jack tuition and go full retail, the poli sci faculty should be made to dress like their fellow professors at Hogwarts. They could double the ticket price and enrolment would still go through the roof.
Serious minds have put the poor voter turnout down to the improvised mail-in manner by which the election was conducted.
But, truthfully, unless you were a unilingual reader of an Indigenous language, how were you denied franchise? You had to request and mail in a ballot. In the case of my elderly father with mobility issues, the method actually made voting easier. Even if the process discouraged some from voting why should that group be any more representative of one party's support than another?
It was a cock-up but, with the exception of a couple of Labrador districts with unchallenged results, it was an equal-opportunity cock-up.
Where was the emergency brake?
How Newfoundland and Labrador — with its harsh unpredictable weather, and having experienced war, civil unrest stemming from a political crisis, numerous epidemics and an earlier pandemic — doesn't have a clear mechanism for the emergency delay of an election is incomprehensible.
Voter turnout has been declining steadily since Confederation. There are many reasons people don't vote apart from being too stunned or too lazy.
There can be a deeply held belief the outcome doesn't matter, that without meaningful levers Newfoundland and Labrador's fate will always be determined by Ottawa, by which we mean the interests of Quebec and Ontario.
Not voting is the closest one can get to choosing, "None of the above." Ryan Cleary didn't vote because he wants to keep his ballot as a souvenir of a bad time. I voted without any trouble.
Alison Coffin blew all but certain victory in the Soviet Socialist Oblast of St. John's East-Quidi Vidi because she campaigned like a defective social democratic robot. Her speech and body language were halting, like something in the machine was malfunctioning. The program to redistribute wealth, when and if wealth was located, was so corrupted as to be undeliverable.
In fairness to Ms. Coffin it's been tough to mount a coherent NDP campaign since Jack Layton turned them into the Liberals on tambourine.The pinkos of the East End traded in their orange Lada for a second-hand Volvo station wagon.
Similarly, the PC robot Ches Crosbie came with a glitch that meant it could not announce a plan to reduce government and ignore the advice of scientists, the only reasons for the existence of a modern conservative party. Mr. Crosbie was always too learned and humane to be a member of the Flintstone family that is the Canadian political right of today. It's no wonder Harper disliked the man.
The Liberals ran their newest, shiniest Boston Dynamics robot against him and Ches didn't have a chance. (Before you ask, yes I am considering a story where a Liberal robot goes rogue, HAL fashion, and kills the entire legislature in order that the mission's primary objective can be met and Liberal government is permanent.)
So much for that landslide…
On the timing of the call, Andrew Furey rolled the dice … and lost. Going into the election with landslide polling numbers, the Liberals paid the highest price for that bad luck, barely squeaking out a majority.
Furey was no better a salesperson than Ms. Coffin or Mr. Crosbie.
He was handed the job of premier before developing his chops. Without experience or training he can appear uncertain and even disingenuous before the cruel camera. He won, narrowly, on faith he has Justin Trudeau's personal cellphone number. He won because the ballot question was simple: who had the best chance of getting Ottawa to pay attention?
Some outcomes were hard to fathom even for those with a grasp of political voodoo. The result in Humber-Bay of Islands can only suggest the zombies there loves their Mary Browns and want old black-and-white horror movies colourized.
The tally in Lake Melville revealed that townie experts on Labrador have no idea what's going on in the Big Land, a seeming impossibility as townie expertise is absolute. Nobody understands what goes on in Mount Pearl other than that somewhere Steve Kent is secretly pulling the strings.
Twenty-three per cent of eligible voters — that's how many of us voted for the Liberals — woke in the night feeling unwell. They had a minor freakout, imagining it was COVID-19. But they soon recognized the symptoms were an old, recurring malaise.
They got up out of bed and shuffled, in the dark, to the bathroom. They opened a drawer and got out their medicine but checking the bottle they found it was well past its best-before date.
After a moment's contemplation, they thought to themselves "shag it" and swallowed a couple of the pills anyway.
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