Canadian Election and Star Wars

If you're not interested in Canadian politics, stop reading and wait for my week 7 NFL picks later this week.

The Canadian election is Tuesday. I am a resident, but not a citizen and can't vote. But, here is my tuppence anyway.

Please, good people of Canada, vote for the Liberals and rid yourself of Stephen Harper. He's no better than a common gangster. Over the past few years, he and his cronies have been accused of:

• offering a financial bribe to a sitting Member of Parliament to change his vote

http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/516276

• deliberately perpetrating a fraudulent scheme to evade election financing laws while campaigning to clean up government after the Liberals had used government funds to finance their 1997 and 2000 campaigns

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080612.welectionstimeline0612/BNStory/National

http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/414652

• fixing the mayoral election in Ottawa, Canada's capital

  http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2007/12/10/ot-mayor-071210.html
  

  http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?k=97758&id=714bc9f1-70dd-45c8-849b-c9b4a8fd804d

I admit that the Liberals under Jean Chretien, the Prime Minister from 1993 to 2003, were corrupt and deserved their defeat in 2006. But, we have now replaced one corrupt regime with another just as rotten.

Stephane Dion, the Liberal leader, is a good man. His plan to introduce a carbon tax is the right thing to do. It's beyond me how any Canadian can consider wasting their vote on the Green Party when Dion is the Liberal leader.

I should say that I myself am a small c conservative raised in Britain during the great days of Margaret Thatcher.

Stephen Harper was and is an intelligent man and a good conservative. Sadly, he has turned out like Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars saga. Anakin Harper came to Ottawa as a young man determined to combat the Liberals and set Canada on a free market path. He grudgingly grew to admire Chancellor Chretien's wily ways of never getting caught and morphed into Darth Harper, a monster who cares only about wielding power and crushing his opponents.