Dashing through the prairie provinces, Jean Chretien, the Prime
Minister of Canada, predicted that his Liberal Party will win big
in the next federal elections, especially in the western provinces.
He will, of course, call the election when it suits his Party and
he speculated that he will increase his number of seats in the
House of Commons from the 177 occupied by the Liberal Party at this
time. According to opinion polls, Chretien has the popular support
of 57 percent of Canadians.
This bravado and self-conceit on the part of Chretien is
coming at a time when the jobless recovery is persisting, resulting
in extremely high levels of unemployment and at a time when the
constitutional crisis grows deeper with a big fuss amongst the
bourgeoisie over language just last week. No problems of the
Aboriginal peoples have been sorted out, and the women, youth and
students, and national minorities are more and more marginalized.
The anti-social offensive continues unabated with almost daily
pronouncements of cutbacks and bankruptcies. Under these
conditions, it is suggested that the Liberals are popular and
Chretien is extremely cocky about it.
The reason Chretien is so cocksure of winning the next
election is his confidence that he will enjoy the support of the
labor aristocracy and the organizations of women, and the youth
and students as well as the national minorities. His government
regularly recruits puppets from amongst the labor aristocrats,
organized women, youth and students, and from the immigrants and
national minorities. Will all these forces come forward to support
Chretien this time around?
Increasing numbers of people see the need to join the
mainstream and develop political cooperation in order to smash the
arrogance of the political parties of the financial oligarchy. Many
are quite frankly fed up with the anti-social offensive of the
Liberal Party and its supreme hypocrisy that its hands are tied
preventing it from doing otherwise. In the recent past, the
financial oligarchy was able to float the Reform Party, which
pretended to be for reform, but was merely a thinly disguised ploy
to capture the protest vote. With this party more and more
discredited, the people are sensing a need to join the mainstream.
Chretien's cocksure dream may yet not come true. It is the
responsibility of the advanced workers to ensure that his hopes are
dashed.
Shawgi Tell
University at Buffalo
Graduate School of Education
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
