Deflecting Attention Won't Change the Facts

After brewing for several days, the conservative election rigging incident has now snowballed all the way up to the Prime Minister's desk.

Unsurprisingly, the PM retorted with defiance and his habitual dose of rhetorical aggression, in an effort to divert attention (Globe and Mail, 29. 02. 2012).

Naturally, he blamed the opposition, evoked once again the far from comparable Vickileaks spat, and as in standard tory scripts he went on a vehement tirade against the Liberal Party.

Incidentally, someone should tell the PM that accusing the grits which have been out of government for the past 6 years, for facts that are old of almost 10 years, is becoming slightly specious.

Lastly, the PM dismissed the whole thing as a "smear campaign" and rumors circulated by "sore losers".

The (not so) funny thing in this whole story is that Elections Canada and the RCMP are taking this whole issue very seriously and their investigations keep spreading from riding to riding (CBC, 29. 02. 2012).

As it turns out, allegations suggest that as many as 30 to 40 ridings were affected by the robocalls, though facts remain to be ascertained and verified. However, the magnitude, scope, systematic and recurrent features of the episodes which seem to outline a coherent pattern are suspicious.

Remember the "strong, stable, conservative national majority"?

Again, it is early to pass a conclusive judgement on the matter, but history may well end up showing that national majority was a PHONY mirage! Pun intended, as usual...

Election Rigging Robocalls Are Latest Proof of Conservative Practice of Putinism

The latest scandal plaguing the Conservative Party of Canada is just another indication of their true fraudulent colors.

Substantive evidence suggests that "robocalls" were made on behalf of Conservative agents (the nature of the link to the party is yet to be ascertained) to mislead electors on the precise location of their polling office (Globe and Mail, 25. 02. 2012).

It is apparent that the only plausible motive for doing this was to prevent those targeted voters (probably identified through their campaigning software as Liberal or NDP electors) from casting their vote which would have favored the rival candidate.

To take the reasoning to its natural conclusion, as in a syllogism, this amounts to election rigging.

That the Conservatives take democracy rather lightly had already been demonstrated, over time, in various instances. That they could go this far, however, is not only disturbing: it is criminal. And it is no coincidence that the incident is being investigated by the RCMP!

At the same time, this is not entirely unexpected, recalling the bogus telephone polling that was conducted in the riding of Montreal Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, spreading erroneous rumors of his resignation only a few months after the May elections).

Liberal leader Bob Rae has compared this to the infamous practices of former US President Richard Nixon. It is probably reductive.

In only a few years, the Conservatives have, and the list is not exhaustive, prorogued parliament to conceal the findings of a parliamentary commission, conducted character killings on their opponents, eliminated the public financing of political parties hoping to undercut the survival of those rival organizations, and now we learn about their election rigging practices.

This latest episode only confirms our previous analysis (See the post for December 3, 2011): Stephen Harper has finally brought Putinism to Canada. And this, by all means, we could do without.