Election on May 30th, Say It Ain’t So
It’s Saturday morning. We’re enjoying a coffee and contemplating the gentle April shower before the flowers of May.
Meanwhile, Premier Stephen McNeil is taking the final steps to plunge Nova Scotia into an election campaign.
Say it ain’t so. Tell me this is just a bad dream. Tell me that our Premier cannot be that callous, that presumptuous. Surely this man does not believe that we are all idiots, that he can’t honestly believe he can spend our money, our tax money, to buy his way into another term as Premier.
Let’s finish our coffee and return our thoughts to spring. Let’s not think that Stephen McNeil is calling us stupid and trying to manipulate us for his personal gain.
However, if the Premier is in fact launching an election campaign this weekend, then shame on him. If today’s news is about an election on May 30th, then ex-premier Stephen McNeil is dumber than a bag of hammers.
For the last month and a half, he and his Liberal MLA’s have been running around the province spending vast amounts of our money, money he repeatedly told us we did not have. He can say it was good fiscal management, but I say it was just a series of lies.
Ask Nova Scotia ’s civil servants who have continued to work without a contract because the Premier said we have no money.
Ask the teachers who were dragged through the wringer in a series of embarrassing moments because we had no money.
Ask the people of the Six Rivers Region who long for a replacement for their aging hospital in Pugwash, one that has been promised again and again, only to have the Premier promise it again while actually announcing to pay for another study, though, this study is billed as the final design study.
The promises now total well over 120 million of money that comes from your pocket and mine. Please tell me he won’t call us to the polls on May 30th because he believes we will not see through such a sham.
As if that’s not bad enough, he called the legislature back into session to table a budget, a document of planned spending that will be thrown in the trash can if an election is called. What a waste! Budget 2017-2018 would be relegated to nothing more than a stage production not fitting of Neptune, Ship’s Company, or even a high school drama club. If yes, the only question is whether the Premier’s budget play is considered horror or farce.
To go through the government’s recent steps as a pre-election strategy is simply a slap in the face to the electorate, or maybe a punch in the gut.
If the Premier calls an election this weekend it has nothing to do with serving Nova Scotians. The truth is that our once popular leader has watched his standing fall in the polls. An election now is to rush the process before the groundswell of change gets too great. The premier's callous regard for our intelligence has just thrown fuel on the fire.
Please say it ain’t so. Please tell me he did not call an election. Please tell me he does not think that little of us, for if he does, he has greatly underestimated our ability to see through this sham, and he is in for a rude awakening.
In this day and age, you don’t regard people as fools and expect them to reward you. To use our money to promise the sun, moon, and stars was bad enough, but to present a fake budget and string us along is no way to launch a believable election campaign.
You can fool some of the people some of the time, but not this time.