Banana-oil Republic of Harperland. . . . .

We in the leftist blogging community have become something like forensic auditors of the slow debasement of democratic values under the HarperCon cabal. It seems that each week we have a new story of autocratic offensiveness to examine as Harper slowly but surely disassembles out democratic institutions. It is a very difficult thing to watch and blogging about it is one of the few outlets we have in the face of such outrageous and disgusting behaviour. But if we manage to save this country from the third-world 'banana-republic' that Harper and his peons are attempting to construct, many great blogs by my peers will form an excellent record of citizens attempting to protect the principles of democracy.

The latest outrage is, in some sense, the worst one. For years we on the left have been saying that the HarperCons are making a classic banana-republic move by making the police and the army de facto extensions of the Conservative Party. The close relationship between the HarperCons and the RCMP became evident even before before Harper sat in the Prime Minister's office. A month before the 2006 election the RCMP broke its own rules by admitting that it was investigating the office of the Liberal Finance Minister Ralph Goodale concerning a leak of budget information. Given the state of the opinions polls before and after this event, one could cogently argue that his move by the RCMP actually cost the Liberals the election and brought the HarperCons to power. Since that time it has become increasingly clear that the HarperCons are creating deep ties between the Conservative Party and the military (and quasi-military RCMP) in this country. And anyone with any honesty or sense must surely be concerned that Canadian democracy is now on a very shaky footing. This week the ties between the Cons and the RCMP was made evident for all to see as emails revealed that RCMP officers now must 'get permission' from the so-called Minister of Public Safety (a scary title in its own right) in order to talk to MPs. The wording of these emails, with their talk of organizing a common strategy between the RCMP and the government, is like something right out of a Latin American dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s.

As the Harper Government slowly sinks into the morass of filth and corruption and desperately breaks their own standard of low behaviour in bullying, negative, and deeply misleading advertising, new questions begin to emerge in the mind of any reasonable Canadian. Questions like "just how far down the third-world dictatorship road will Harper be willing to go?" And even scarier questions such as "if, as the next federal election nears, their defeat seems certain, will they even hold elections at all, or will they manufacture some national crisis to avoid lossing power?" Such questions, which would have once seemed absurd in relation to Canada, now seem very real to anyone who is not blindly partizan. As the Harper Party gradually puts itself above the law and destroys the supposed independence of those organizations that hold the military power in this country, anyone with a thorough knowledge of history should be getting more than a little nervous.