How did coalition become a dirty word in Canadian politics? Since last winter's failed attempt, Tory ministers have used it as their default term of derision in Question Period. Er, no deficit, um, sound fundamentals, ah, lost files, sexy something ... Aha -- COALITION. This week, the Bloc Québécois and New Democrats adopted the usage, mocking the Liberal-Conservative, yuck, coalition.
This smarts. I consider coalition a noble, eloquent term in the political lexicon. It refers to groups who put aside differences to achieve something better for all. The Allies of the Second World War were a coalition. Most social advances, like health care or Old Age Security, are won through forms of coalition. It's a technical, structural term, yet it strikes an almost elegiac note, like a comparable word, organize. (He said what they can never kill -- goes the song about murdered union poet Joe Hill -- Went on to organize ...)
Never mind, its time will come round again, that's the way of worthy lost causes. In 1982, NDP MP Margaret Mitchell rose to say a report showed one in 10 Canadian husbands abused their wives. She recalls: "An uproar of male laughter erupted ... a nearby Tory joked, 'I don't beat my wife. Do you, George?'" I heard it broadcast; it was crass and shocking.
Just two years later, women's issues had become so prominent that federal leaders were forced to hold a televised election debate on them. Nobody guffawed.
The (momentarily) lost cause of coalition is linked to the lost cause of proportional representation, which has gone down in three recent provincial votes. That smarts, too. I thought PR was a no-brainer. It's self-evidently more democratic than our current system, where a minority of votes routinely elects majority governments and many or most votes simply don't count. The link is that under PR, parties would often have to work together. PR equals coalition politics.
Opponents say this would mean unstable government, as if stability, rather than good or democratic government, is the goal. So either I'm wrong or it wasn't the time yet for PR. I'm hoping the latter. Save your coalition dollars, boys, PR will rise again.
In this vein, take Rev. Jesse Jackson's run for U.S. president in 1988. It just wasn't in the cards -- the winds of history were in his face, not at his back. Most people would have said the same of Barack Obama. Maybe he thought so himself, and was just positioning for vice-president or for 2012.
But the winds of history had shifted. No one quite controls them, although many try. Generations come and go and suddenly the excluded becomes possible.
Take U.S. health-care reform. In 1992, Hillary Clinton said a Canadian-style single-payer approach wasn't even discussable. The Obama team agrees on that, but has put a "public option" into its bill. It has stunning 76-per-cent support in this week's polls. As for single-payer, the U.S. media have always considered it unmentionable. Even congressional Democrats refuse to let its advocates testify on it.
Yet, for the first time, it has slithered into public view and debate anyway. It's the zeitgeist, a.k.a. the winds of history. It was time. With the zeitgeist, as the old guys say in the sauna, Ya never know.
I'm not saying there's progress in human affairs, I don't want to go that far. But there is movement, and it hasn't entirely to do with conscious agents, especially those in formal politics.
This poses a challenge to social activists, because sometimes you have the wind at your back and sometimes not, and if you stick to your principles, it can get lonely with the wind in your face. That's the testing time. Today, you say coalition and many Canadians shudder.
But a day will come when they will merely shrug because, after all, it's only democratic and not to tremble over. All the clichés apply. There is a time and tide. But you have to wait, ready, and then seize it.
Links:
[1] http://rabble.ca/taxonomy/term/2687
[2] http://www.rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/rabble-staff/2009/06/wondering-why-liberals-pulled-out-coalition
[3] http://www.rabble.ca/columnists/canadas-next-government
[4] http://www.rabble.ca/babble/canadian-politics/coalition-iggy-going-around-it
[5] http://rabble.ca/print/columnists/2009/06/coalitions-and-other-lost-causes#comment-1029316
[6] http://rabble.ca/print/columnists/2009/06/coalitions-and-other-lost-causes#comment-1029340
[7] http://rabble.ca/user
[8] http://rabble.ca/user/register
on the word 'coalition', it reminds me that i re-read some items from a Ukrainian source, not online, a few weeks ago, that had been produced earlier, and in it Moroz was saying that he definitely didn't want to create a coalition because that would mean taking votes from Yuschenko, whom he favoured at the time. i'll have to try to find that article again. anyway, the point is that for many who follow Ukrainian politics in this country, it was a catch word that was unfavourable at the time, which i didn't know or i'd have said something last fall. it is important for people who are into politics here to keep track of word usages, which may have changed again by now.
(i just checked an old Canada-Ukraine Monitor issue i had, and it wasn't that, so it must have been a clip from my folks' DVD- "Ukraine: Breakthrough to Democracy". the website listed on the back is www.naipec.com which appears to be a Canadian company.)
also, i should say that the 1996 issue of the Canada Ukraine Monitor (the only issue i've got here- when the hryvnia came out) had a section on Edmonton and Calgary oil and gas companies that were just starting to do business with Ukraine's fuel companies. i'm not sure where this is at now, again, it's probably important for people who are near libraries to get current issues of these kinds of journals.
i still think the joint work of various parties last fall was a very good thing to do here, maybe the choice of name wasn't, then. and i don't' know how the term is perceived now amongst the majority of Ukrainian Canadians. i do know that there have always been scads of political parties and that people have tended to be very partisan.
the question becomes, in other countries and here; at what point do conditions demand the learning of new skills (like communicating usefully instead of arguing and fighting) ?