Ignatieff Wants a Coalition, Conservatives Say. Norman Specter Says He Nixed One.

If you visit the Conservative Party website, you will realize that Ignatieff is willing to engage in coalition negotiations, or so the Conservatives hope. However, these claims are unsubstantiated, sanctimonious, and communicate a purposeful impression of such a coalition as undemocratic.

Apparently, "[t]his week, Michael Ignatieff admitted that the Liberal-NDP-Bloc Québécois coalition is alive and well. Ignatieff is ready to bring back the Coalition if it means he gets to be Prime Minister."

But, whereas the document substantiates a statement by Ignatieff on the coalition crisis last December, it does not point to any source for these allegations. One doubts that there is any real basis for this claim, as if there were, wouldn't the Conservatives be all too ready to provide it? What's more, I haven't come across any such stories, and I doubt most people have. Perhaps the news was communicated only to the Conservatives?

In fact, Norman Spector wrote a blog post the day before this document was published entitled Iggy nixes a coalition

Secondly, the document brings forward the inevitable attack on Ignatieff: "While the Liberals and NDP and Bloc Québécois play petty political games, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative government remain focused on the economy."

This, obviously, is based on the premise that there have actually been talks of a coalition. Be that as it may, these words exonerate Stephen Harper and his government from any such "petty politics" that they maintain the others are engaging in. Doesn't making up false news and then calling the other parties petty constitute a highly ironic example of petty politics?

In all of this, the document purposefully portrays any idea of a coalition as an undemocratic agreement, nothing better than a power grab. Informed observers know however that a coalition is in fact a perfectly democratic and legitimate form of government under the constitution.

The reminder that last fall, "In order to seize the power that the voters had denied them, the Liberals entered a coalition with the NDP and the Bloc Québécois in order to overturn the results of the last election." shows this lack of understanding of the constitution of this country, or a deliberate misleading of the public.

In other words, all these three aspects make this attack a truly Harper/Conservative one.

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