Yesterday I wrote this gentle little sonnet about the people whining about proposed urban political ridings:
Conservatives are tossing out every bullshit rationalization they can think of to keep the current system because the current system is broken in their favour. In fact, one of the three commissioners — David Marit, who represents rural Saskatchewanians as the president of SARM –wrote a profoundly embarrassing and shameless dissent. We get it, Conservatives. You like your Saskatchewan kingdom and you’ll do whatever it takes to keep it. And fuck logic, and fuck democracy, and fuck NDP, Liberal and Green voters, and fuck integrity.
Today the L-P has Murray Mandryk’s excellent column on David Marit’s boundary commission dissent:
In Marit’s minority report, he suggests that business and political presenters to the commission (who happened to be Conservative supporters) know better than the commissioners what’s best for their communities. Really? Local Conservative-minded mayors, councillors and businessmen are more informed and less biased than a respected political scientist and judge?
The message should be clear whether one prefers my drunken ranting or Mandryk’s sobre punditry: Conservative gerrymandering won’t get a free ride this time.
I hope the Tory party hacks shamelessly trying to torque the system in their favour are getting the message.
*There’s a small error in Mandryk’s column: he says: “We’ve had these four-way splits only since the last Saskatchewan boundary hearings when the commission was bullied into the current cockamamie map that views Wynyard and North Central Regina as communities of similar interest.” Actually, the cockamamie goes back to 1966. In 2002 the bullies successfully fought to KEEP the cockamamie map. It was ridiculous, but they got away with it.
