…because Dad’s laying down the law.
Yesterday afternoon, after arriving back in Accordion City,
I dropped by Mom and Dad’s place. It’s near the airport, and it was a
nice thing to do since I’d missed the weekly family dinner on account
of being in Boston for the weekend.
“I don’t know if you’ve seen the news,” Dad said, while I told him
about my trip, “but they’ve announced a date for the election.”
“June 28th,” I said. “I saw the papers during my stopover in Montreal.”
“You know, this family votes always votes Liberal. Always.” he said emphatically, with a glance that seemed to say If the Conservatives win, all us coloured folk will be rounded up within a half hour and put to work in the salt mines.
I always take Dad’s advice under consideration, but I also am old
enough to know when Dad is right and when is isn’t. Cases in point: he
once thought that my strong interest in computers was not a real
academic pursuit and detracted from my high school studies, and there’s
that really bad Bert Convy perm he once had in the seventies.
However, he is no stranger to politics. His father and mother were in municipal politics in the Philippines. His cousin, General Renato deVilla,
was the secretary of defense and a presidential candidate. He’s done
his share of work with people in both the provincial and federal
governments here in Canada. Most importantly, he engineered our
departure from the Philippines during Marcos’ dictatorial flip-out, an act aided, abetted and ignored by the Americans (Bush 41 once toasted Marcos with “We love your adherence to democratic principles” while the opposition was either in exile or jail), who needed Clark Air Force Base and Subic Bay Naval Station.
I smirk every time David refers to Canada as a “dictatorship” (albeit a Disneyland one) or Kathy calls Canada a “banana republic with snow”; they’re both nice folks, but I worry that they’d fold like cheap furniture during a real crisis.
A friend of mine is voting NDP — not
because she thinks they’ll win, but to have them garner enough seats to
keep whomever wins in check. My opinion is that if you’re going to vote
for a party that can barely organize a beer run — and even then, not
without going into committee and calling in a sensitivity consultant —
go all the way and vote for the Natural Law Party of Canada.
She also suggested that the resort that my family is building in the
Philippines should be an ecotourism one, and I managed to fight off the impulse to roll my eyes. Not messing up our own backyard
is part of the plan, but making it the primary selling point makes about as much
sense as promoting a restaurant that sells watery plebian beer and
just-passable food solely on the strength of its big-breasted
waitresses.
Oh, wait…
Let me be clear right now: only severe brain damage or the promise of a
free bionic leg and kidney for Dad would ever get me to vote for the Bloc Quebecois.
Vive la rue Dorchester!
So here I sit in the political centre, going: “Liberals? Conservatives? Liberals? Conservatives?” Looks like I have some reading and candidate meetings in my future.
Feel free to throw in your two cents; that’s what the comments are for…
). On page F6, there’s a quick writeup of 