By Joshua Estabrooks
Pioneer Staff
So another election has come and gone, and despite all the sabre rattling and promises of change, we all woke up this morning in almost exactly the same situation as when we woke up yesterday.
The Liberals have yet another majority, and the NDP are the official opposition. And while it is amusing that the Premier of the province didnt get elected in her home riding, the campaign is proof positive that Christy Clark is a truly charismatic leader who has proven all the pollsters wrong with a come-from-behind win of epic proportions.
Locally, the Columbia Valley re-elected NDP candidate Norm Macdonald despite some tough competition from some intriguing candidates, but where does that leave us in terms of getting things done for our valley?
Ideally, we should all be voting with our hearts and minds in an attempt to choose the best possible person to represent us. But it seems that in the last few elections, strategy has been the determining factor, not conviction.
In a perfect world, the percentage of popular vote would be accurately reflected in the legislature. Ie. Party X received 10 per cent of the popular vote, they would then occupy 10 per cent of the seats in government. Without this system in place (thanks in large part to a very deliberate smear campaign by the governing party when the question of electoral reform was put to the populace a few years ago), voting becomes much more like betting on a horse race, where voters are forced to make decisions based on who they feel has the best chance of winning, or whose party has the best chance of winning.
At the end of the day, we have an MLA who is unable to truly deliver on his vision for the valley as he is not a member of the governing party. Im not saying having an MLA as a member of the opposition is necessarily a bad thing, but no one can deny that it makes achieving our goals for the valley that much more difficult.
