Yaaawn… What a Nothingburger of an election

By Ivan Morgan

So summer is over, and everyone is back in the grind. On top of the grim business of trying to keep body and soul of you and possibly loved ones together, we all now face two elections in the next little while.
Municipal elections are important to every community, because we all want our tax dollars spent carefully and wisely.
There is also a provincial election (could be called by the time you read this), which is shaping up to be unimportant to anyone – unimportant for a host of reasons. We know our provincial tax dollars will not be spent either carefully or wisely. We know we won’t get the services we need or pay for, and we know no one currently looking to get elected is going to be able to do anything about it. It’s beginning to look like a boring parade of nobodies and has-beens duking it out for cushy jobs with great pensions (except, as I have written about, the independent candidates. But very few of them to date.)
In a word, it looks like the provincial election is shaping up to be a nothingburger.
Think this is a harsh, negative assessment? Prove me wrong.
As a person steeped in the politics of this place, I am saddened by the lack of passion in today’s provincial politics. It seems to me most people are past caring.
In 1971, when I was 12, our house was St. John’s Progressive Conservative party headquarters. Every room was converted to offices. My parents moved my brother and I to the gravel basement – our beds next to the furnace. (Child protection! Don’t be talkin’!) The house was a hub of activity, people coming and going day and night; my parents working passionately for what they saw as the peaceful overthrow of a dictator: Joseph Smallwood. There were phones in every room (black Bakelite models for younger readers) and my brother and I amused ourselves by phoning each other from different rooms.
Where are you? Your bedroom. Where are you? Dining room.
In my late teens I campaigned for Brian Peckford. I saw him give many passionate speeches – folks didn’t know what they were in for when they came to see him speak. Think Baptist revival. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
Who remembers the battle for the leadership of the Liberal party in 2001 – Roger Grimes versus John Efford? There’s a great book about that passionate struggle, It’s Just Politics, by Sonia Glover. It outlines the fighting, anger, bitterness – a lot of passion – which caused the Liberal party to split in half and left the door open for Danny Williams and the PCs in 2003.
In 2007, his second election, I was on Danny’s tour bus for a few days and covered that campaign. Heady times.
And now, Hogan and company versus Wakeham and his crew?
Nothingburger.
Poor Hogan can’t even get the election issues right. He says it will be the ruinous sellout to Quebec of the Churchill River hydro resources. More on that later.
This boring political scene has been brewing for some time. Can anyone explain to me what Andrew Furey was about? Anyone passionate about his tenure? What was his legacy? Photo ops?
The people of this province seem to be saying “Meh” to the lot of them. There’s still time for a rousing election but I’m not holding my breath.
The late great Ray Guy – journalist, columnist, writer and actor, Newfoundland’s gem – once wondered in print if Newfoundland was the place for democracy. Too tumultuous, too rowdy. Maybe, he mused, we should give it all up and just hire a whoreson good manager. We would hire one, Ray, with our votes, if we could find one.
Where’s the passion? Where did it go? Is it a thing of the past – a relic of another long-gone time? Am I longing for something no longer relevant in our politics?
Is passion passe?
Ivan Morgan can be reached at ivan.morgan@gmail.com