OTTAWA (DawgNews) Twenty years after the election that many thought would topple Stephen Harper from power, Elections Canada has still not released the results, prompting an editorial in the Globe and Mail and street protests in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, led by members of the Green New Democrats. In Montreal, as they have done every year since the election was held, mourners filed past the body of Stéphane Dion, now preserved in a glass case at Liberal headquarters under the motto Dans la mort comme dans la vie ("In death as in life").
In a terse press release, the Supreme Court of Canada announced that it would not hear a new appeal brought against Elections Canada by the Toronto-based Coalition for Electoral Fairness, on the basis of stare decisis. A previous case, two years after the election, was rejected. The court ruled at the time that Elections Canada was still investigating "electoral anomalies," and that their explanation for the delay was legally valid: "They have not strayed from the law." A member of Elections Canada, reached at his winter home in the Turks and Caicos islands, declined comment.
President Stephen Harper, presently reviewing Canadian troops in Baluchistan, was not expected to mark the occasion. A press agent stated, however, that he would "go on serving the people of Canada until this mess is sorted out."
World reaction was muted. In North Korea, Kim Bon-hwa, the country's "Glorious Leader," sent a telegram of congratulations to the President. In Zimbabwe, however, President Robert Mugabe, who celebrated his 104th birthday this past February, was openly critical of what he called Canada's "technological backwardness." "We finished our count in just a few weeks," he said. "Then we got Diebold machines. Problem solved."
No comments:
Post a Comment