What stinkin' fixed election date?

I'm afraid I must agree with Rex Murphy about prime minister Harper's shameless switcheroo. How can Parliament be dysfunctional if M. Dion rolls over and shows his belly on every confidence vote?

And here's a lovely paragraph from the Ottawa Citizen's Randall Denley:

[...]

The problem is, Harper is such a smart guy that sometimes he even outsmarts himself. He's dying to call an election, but one of his own election promises is making things complicated. His fixed-date election law was one of those easy pieces of legislation that was meant to create the illusion of reform, but now that Harper wants to shoot his own government in the head, he finds he has no gun. Having told voters that scheduled elections would prevent governments from manipulating election dates to their advantage, it's now difficult to manipulate the election date to his advantage without someone noticing...

Mark C.

Posted by markc at August 24, 2008 06:52 PM