Weekly Bulletin #4

This past week a few events happened although still generally pretty quiet. On Monday, was the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down. The fall of the Berlin Wall was symbolic in many ways of a much larger change happening throughout Europe. Earlier that year, the first hole in the Iron Curtain was punctured when the barbed wire along the Austrian-Hungarian border was removed. Throughout that year, there were many protests throughout Eastern Europe that helped fuel the end of the Cold War. The Solidarity movement in Poland helped bring communism down there, there was the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, while in Romania, their dictator Carcescu was executed by firing squad after being removed from power. This marked the triumph of democracy and freedom over communism and oppression. Not only was a city and country re-united again, a continent that had been needlessly divided was again re-united. Today, many of those countries are now members of NATO and the EU and in fact you can now cross into Eastern Europe since 2007 without having to show your passport or stop at the border as most of those countries are now part of the Schenghen Agreement. Despite this, there are still many parts of the world that suffer from oppression, however hopefully this can give hope to other regions that no matter how oppressed, it is possible to bring about freedom.

On Monday there were four by-elections. A good night for the NDP and Conservatives and a bad one for the Bloc Quebecois and the Liberals. The Tories reclaimed Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley which was really no surprise as this has traditionally been a safe Tory riding, although there was always the question of whether the anger towards Bill Casey's ejection was still hanging over. Their gain of Montmagny-L'Islet-Kamouraska-Riviere du Loup however was a surprise and big news. A few months ago, most pundits said the Tories were all but dead in Quebec, so this shows that they still have some strength in Rural Quebec. However, one should note this is right next door to the Appalaches-Chaudiere region where they already hold four ridings and also the demographic who generally votes Tory in Quebec tend to show up no matter what, thus the lower the turnout, the better they do in Quebec. So this pick-up does not mean they will hold this is in a general election, but still good for them nonetheless. The NDP won solidly in New Westminster-Coquitlam, so if there was any riding the Tories underperformed in, it was here. It also appears the backlash towards the HST might have hurt them somewhat. The NDP also came in second in Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley and Hochelaga, so despite not coming close to winning in either, coming in second is still a step in the right direction for the NDP in both those ridings as traditionally the Liberals usually come in second in both cases. The Bloc Quebecois held Hochelaga as expected, but their loss in Montmagny-L'Islet-Kamouraska-Riviere du Loup is not a good sign. With the separtist issue all but dead, much of the Bloc's votes tend to be more along ideological lines, thus in the case you can see them doing well in the urban left leaning riding, but struggling in the rural centre-right one. Trying to keep all sides of the spectrum united was easy when they were united in their common goal of an independent Quebec, but less so, on other issues. None of these ridings have traditionally voted Liberal, so the Liberals not winning any of them was never the issue, the issue was more how they did in terms of placing and here they did as bad and in some cases worse than Dion did in the past general election. They came in third or fourth in every riding and failed to get over 25% in any one of the ridings and only got over 20% in one of them. This means the Liberals have got a lot of work ahead if they want to return to power. They didn't need to win any of the ridings up for grabs, but a strong second place showing would have at least showed they had the winds in their sail.