A Coalition Government in Canada!

Ottawa has gotten interesting again. It is now completely overshadowing the current Quebec campaign and with reason: what may happen on December 8^th would be an historical event rarely seen in the Commonwealth. Now a lot of people have talked about how it would or would not be a good idea for the coalition government to happen so I'm not going to talk about that. Instead I want to talk about how this makes people feel in general about our political leaders.

    Stephen Harper's economic address was seen by the media and, by extension, the population at large as an underhanded tactic to let his ideology true and destroy his rivals. On the other side of the Parliament, the opposition is not out to gain power. Nothing short of that will satisfy them. None of the sides in this seem to put their people in front of their own interests. In my opinion, this is the kind of behavior that will, in the end, increase voter apathy towards our politicians. In the leader-follower dynamic, the followers are not in service of the leader. They are actually looking for the opposite: a leader that will fulfill their needs.

In my opinion, politicians have not been acting as leaders for some time now. Leadership is about setting goals and finding the best strategy to achieve those goals. Now, I think that deep down, most people go into politics because they want to make their area better. Therefore, what the differences between political parties are more about the tools than the goals themselves. Some politicians, however, paint their rivals as the devil. They are the ones that are the woes of the country and, for some obscure reason, want to deprive you of everything you worked for and make you miserable. A true leader would look at his rivals and find ways to work with them. The people know this. This is why, notwithstanding the power-grabbing idea behind it, the coalition government is somewhat alluring to the population.

We want to see our leaders work together for our greater good. I don't think anyone thinks that any one of the main federal parties only have bad ideas. We want to see they pool their strengths, form a parliament that would work as a team towards our greater good.