This being an election year — a double election year — Newfoundlanders can do themselves and each other a fabulous favour by vowing not to vote Liberal or Tory.
Provincially, of course. Federally, it doesn’t matter who Newfoundlanders vote for.
This being early days in 2019, there is lots of time for thousands of Newfoundlanders to declare, “In this year’s provincial election, I will not vote Liberal or Progressive Conservative.”
For best effect, this should be said loudly and often.
Ding! There’s the first predictable email in my in-box accusing me yet again of being an NDP proselytizer. Once again, I state loudly: I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the NDP.
Note that the suggested New Year’s resolution doesn’t include, “I will vote for the NDP.”
For best results, voters should opt for negativity — i.e., saying no to both the Liberals and Conservatives — and ignore the purveyors of banality who continually bleat about the importance of “being positive,” i.e., agreeing with said purveyor on various issues of import.
Past experience proves about 80 per cent of voters won’t be convinced to reject the Liberal, Tory, Liberal, Tory arc of Newfoundland politics. This year marks 70 years of fruitless obedience.
The power of negativity would soon be revealed. With the electorate’s broad declaration to not vote Liberal or Tory, a whole range of possibilities arises, all of which would prove more beneficial than yet another Liberal or PC administration.
Independent candidates would be emboldened to run.
Perhaps a Newfoundland and Labrador Party would arise. And why not? Saskatchewan is governed by the Saskatchewan Party, proof that a bland and meaningless name is not a bar to winning office.
In a similar vein, maybe political experimenter and mega-patriot Ryan Cleary would be inspired to found a Pink, White and Green Party.
Reversing its trend, the NDP might finally win support from people other than students and aging hippie idealists.
Hold over some Christmas kindness for the leftists. It can’t be easy being a socialist in Newfoundland. Not only are their hopes and dreams for a better society regularly rejected at the polls, the leftists suffer the added pain and humiliation of living in the province that should be the most leftist among the 10, but doesn’t even crack the Top 5.
Newfoundland, far more than British Columbia, has all the political and economic attributes that should make its electorate left-leaning, but, inexplicably, the long-suffering peasants cling to their devotion to their lords and masters, their Liberals and Tories.
Past experience proves about 80 per cent of voters won’t be convinced to reject the Liberal, Tory, Liberal, Tory arc of Newfoundland politics. This year marks 70 years of fruitless obedience.
To break that bad habit, let’s offer a straightforward rationale for such rejection.
The Progressive Conservatives, as everyone now realizes — even if it took some people eight years — spawned the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project, a mega-project of such mega-disastrous mega-proportions that the PCs deserve to be sent into the political wilderness for a full generation, until, say, 2044.
Likewise, the Liberals deserve to accompany the Tories into said wilderness, without so much as a dull hatchet.
Despite the pathetic protestations of Premier Dwight Ball, the Liberals are equally culpable for the economy-wrecking predicament the province and its people will be in when the Muskrat bills arrive in 2020-21.
The Liberals could have, and should have, cancelled the project immediately upon their election in 2015. But instead of doing what was best for the province, they did what was best for the Liberal party — they opted for more manipulation and propaganda, they continued to cast blame solely upon the PCs and they expect that strategy to return them to power later this year.
To add insult to economic injury, Ball continues to claim, preposterously, that neither ratepayers nor taxpayers will be burdened with paying for Muskrat Falls.
Welcome to 2019, bringer of the province’s most revolting vote to date.
Brian Jones is a desk editor at The Telegram. He can be reached at brian.jones@thetelegram.com.
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