Judgement Day in Manitoba

May 22, 2007 is Judgment Day in Manitoba. Manitobans go to the polls on Tuesday to elect a new government. By the looks of it, incumbent NDP Premier Gary Doer is likely to be re-elected. Despite being a Liberal, I am quite glad if this is true. Gary Doer is a very moderate New Democrat who actually won his first term in 1999 on a promise of modest tax cuts. The Doer government is left-of-centre, but more in the sense that a Liberal government would be left-of-centre. I also like the Manitoba Liberals. But they are a distant third party that only has two seats in the legislature, which is not enough for official party status (something I think they deserve even with two seats). Going into the election, the Manitoba Liberals only have those two seats but have the potential to gain more. If the Manitoba Liberals win a total of three seats, they would still be short one to make official party status. I believe the winning government should be gracious and restore their official party status even with only 3 seats.

If I lived in Jon Gerrard’s riding or Kevin Lamoureux’s riding, I’d vote Liberal. Those two men are the two current Liberal MLAs in Manitoba. If I lived in a super-safe NDP riding, I would vote Liberal. If I lived in a riding where the Liberals finished second to the NDP last time, I’d choose to vote Liberal. But if I lived in a riding which is a tight fight between the Tories and the NDP, I’d vote NDP to avoid splitting the left-of-centre vote. This is all a moot point, of course, because I live in Ontario. I’d also vote Liberal if I lived in a super-safe Tory Manitoba riding like Tuxedo. Of course I would choose to avoid living a Tory seat.

Also of note is that even Liberals can occasionally get shortchanged by the first-past-the-post electoral system. In the 1995 Manitoba election, the Liberals received 23.73% of the vote resulting in only 3 seats. Currently there is something going on in the Manitoba riding of Wellington. There were allegations of signing up members without said new members paying their own membership fees leveled at incumbent NDP MLA Conrad Santos. As a result Santos was forced to drop out of the nomination and is now running as an independent. He will split the vote. I am hoping that Santos wins. He was in my opinion treated unfairly. He may well have done nothing wrong. If nominations had been protected, none of this would have ever happened. This is why I believe incumbents should be protected from nomination challenges. Another NDP MLA also lost re-nomination for no apparent good reason. Therefore I indeed think that incumbents should be protected to prevent messes like these. If Santos wins, he may well rejoin the NDP caucus. Mr. Santos is 72 and has served in the legislature from 1981 to 1988 and continuously since 1990. It is not fair that this long-serving member has been in treated this way. That he’s running again when he’s 72, even as an independent, shows how much he loves politics. He ought to be able to serve until he’s 82 or longer. What happened to him this year is totally unfair.


In conclusion I want to wish Jon Gerrard and Kevin Lamoureux good luck in their ridings for Tuesday. I also send good wishes to the Liberals in the election on Tuesday in ridings that they are not splitting the left-of-centre vote. I also wish Gary Doer good luck in his quest to win a third consecutive majority government on Tuesday.