Democratic Deficit

In Ivory Coast, the latest of the African countries, following Kenya and Zimbabwe, where the president set aside the results of a democratic election to inform the country that he has no intention of stepping down and the opposition can go stuff itself, chaos has resulted, with government and opposition forces both on a tribal-slanted slaughter mission. In Ivory Coast, French intervention will shortly settle the question of legal, democratic order.

But the thousands who have died in an orgy of hated and revenge as the two sides seek advantage in the contested election fall-out will remain a blot on democratic procedure. Democracy is new to Africa, but deadly tribal antipathies leading to mass slaughter most definitely are not. When the two are harnessed, the newer social-political convention is supposed to surmount the traditional war-mongering disagreements between clan and tribe, but there is a long way yet to go on that path.

There are reminders on occasion that even in Canada, where the population does not resort to primitive violence and democracy has as long a pedigree as the country has existed, people still react on occasion with a vestige of the same blistering entitlements leading to bitter dissent. One might suppose if this were to occur anywhere in Canada, it is likelier to happen in a rural setting, rather than an urban one.

Urbanites are more shall we say - urbane, sophisticated in their thinking and reactions; cosmopolitan in their understanding of the social contract. While rural dwellers are understandably closer to the land, so their inherited and primal instinctiveness is instructed through a dimly recalled and subliminal acknowledgement of collective memory known as the survival instinct.

All this to say that in the recently-concluded provincial nomination in the Carleton-Mississippi Mills riding for the Progressive Conservative Party, the riding association itself was taken aback when a well-planned campaign with more support locally than they might have realized existed was successful in finally unseating 69-year-old veteran MPP Norm Sterling.

One might ask, isn't 34 years at the public trough as a politico long enough for anyone? When might someone of his vintage and his experience consider it is time to move aside and allow others to take up where he left off? Particularly when many in the riding may not consider theirs to be a fiefdom; rather a riding in need of someone who will become actively engaged in presenting their interests at Queens Park.

Mr. Sterling's opponent, Jack MacLaren, a West Carleton farmer and libertarian, will now join his next-door colleague Randy Hillier who represents the riding of Lanark-Frontenac Lennox and Addington where both of them may partner in tilting at frustrating-landowner windmills. As for Mr. Sterling's ire; longevity in a political contest is never an assurance of easy victory, nor should it be.

The manner in which a politician acquits him/herself on behalf of his/her constituents is the ruling order here. It is a democracy, after all, that we celebrate and live within. And which civil people recommend for other nations so they too may realize fairness and justice. And to be completely fair, the grudging acceptance of the inevitable by Mr. Sterling fits him exceedingly ill.

In that the ill grace that he evinced in his unwillingness to accept that the electorate chose a replacement rather than allow him to continue as their representative shines a nasty light upon his character. His grumpiness in alluding to his continued challenge to maintain a seat by running as an independent, his public flirtation with abandoning his party during the election by voting for another party should a personal friend decide to run, does him no credit.

What he does demonstrate is a vain conceit in his belief that he alone represents the needs of the area's constituents, and his cantankerous rejection of the idea that someone else may now be in a better position to do just that, reflects his own sad lack of principle.