The Similkameen News Leader
Editorial
May 05, 2009
YOU SNOOZE, YOU LOSE
I missed the all-candidates forum last week.
Or should I call it the both-candidates forum?
What had happened was I got home from a long day at work, had dinner with my wife then laid down on the couch for a short nap. Sort of unusual for me to do so early in the evening, but for some reason I was beat.
By the time I woke up the both-candidates forum was over and I had achieved the impossible having slept through it, without actually being there.
I think my subconscious was telling me what my conscious state was aware of from the beginning it's probably not going to be all that exciting an election in our newly-named riding of Fraser-Nicola.
I know, myself and all my invisible closet Liberal friends are hoping for a victory but the fact of the matter is the only way anyone is going to beat Harry Lali in this riding is, well, one of two ways.
Harry would have to either retire (for good) from politics or move to another part of the province and run in a riding other than ours. I hear the far northern parts of BC are just starting to be recognized as 'destination territory' these days.
There's no other way to beat him here. That's not to say the Liberals haven't tried, but as much as I sometimes hate to admit it, he's a force to be reckoned with.
Harry and I have known each other for well over ten years. If you ask him he'll tell you exactly how long he's known me and probably share a detail or two of one of our early meetings. We have what I would call a friendly respect for each other. We've discussed a lot of stuff off the record and shared a lot of laughs. We know probably too much about each other and I've never voted for him.
That doesn't mean I don't like the guy. I think he was at his absolute best when he was the Transportation Minister and fought long and hard for highway projects throughout the province with particular attention to his riding.
I have to say the newly out-of-retirement Harry took a little getting used to, but he latched on to a cause (fighting for rural BC) and started making sense again.
And although the Liberals will likely remain in power in BC after May 12th and Harry will claim another victory in his amazing political career some of us will ask ourselves why we bothered going to the polls again.
After any election I sort of forget about the party and just deal with the MLA (or MP) as our representative. They are our messengers to the powers that be and we are expected to use our messenger in the best way possible. I have to admit I'm sort of used to having Harry as our messenger to Victoria....and sometimes change is a good thing.
But I suspect after May 12th there's not going to be a whole of change in BC politics and after most of us get past the whining and complaining of another election that proved nothing significant we'll start to move forward with different targets in our crosshairs.
Then after the Olympics we'll go to the polls again and by that time our riding will change in size again and be renamed something crazy like Lower Nicola-Upper Similkameen or Merritt-Princeton Corridor or whatever.
And I'll never be able to sleep through another all-candidates forum ever again.
