Thursday, April 12, 2007

The Promise

I listened to Tom Rideout on VOCM Backtalk today Apr.11, 2007 responding to Chris Montague of the Metis concerning a broken promise by Williams and his government. I ask you, if it wasn’t a broken promise or a lie, what was it?

The feeling I got from listening to Tom Rideout was that, the press release and letter to the Métis a couple days before the last provincial election was nothing. If Mr. Williams’s statements were such a frivolous thing, why did he feel that it was important enough to release to the press and write a letter to the Labrador Métis Nation?

Was it just something to say, just a play with words, and a well crafted letter to fool Métis voters, a con job, a smoke screen, or what? Danny knows as will as I do that it worked, mission accomplished. Personally I know of two people who were going to support the Labrador Party until they read this press release. One of them said that he had to vote for the PC’s now and that he convinced at least thirty other Labrador Party supported to do likewise. A lady also told me that she convinced at least twenty to vote for John Hickey of the PC’s.

The guy who convinced thirty to change their potential vote said later that he would never vote for John Hickey again, this was after he found out that this press release and letter seamed to be a scam.

Those people were made believers by Mr. Williams and I suspect many more. As a result of this last minute move by the Williams group the PC’s won that election, an election that would have most certainly went to Brandon Pardy of the Labrador Party.

At the time of the last election the people of Lake Melville were so disgruntled with the main stream parties, that is until this promise came along that they were going flat out to support an unknown person of the Labrador Party. Of course I’m referring to Brandon Pardy. Make no mistake about it Brandon is an intelligent young Labradorian and deserved to win and he would have if there was a level playing field.

Makes me wonder what kind of stunts the Conservatives played to win the by-election in Labrador West and what other stunts they may have up their sleeves for the up coming election October 9 of this year.

How can the peoples of the Bigland avoid such an occurrence again, especially during the next general election? I suppose we must start thinking now of possible schemes that the PC’s may pull, even to the point of making notes of them. One thing for sure that Williams will do is list all of the things that he did for Labrador during his mandate, however small those things may be. Before we jump for joy though, we should ask ourselves, what price we will pay for them. Will we give him the Lower Churchill for the butter we get?

2 comments:

Brian said...

A few things come to mind here:
Always read the fine print. A politician’s word is not worth the paper it is written on. People hear what they want to hear. People get the government/politician they deserve [though I would not wish a couple of Labrador’s present politicians on any one, and that is a bi partisan statement].

I think the above most likely covers most of the reasons that led to Lake Melville region voting in a Conservative last election.

Norman Andrews said...

Thanks brian.

In the most part I agree with your comments.

It is sad though that many voters are so gullible - not just Labrador people. Newfoundland people are in the same bolt by trusting Danny Williams and his crew so much. That is why Danny is 80% in the polls. Undeserved trust, in my opinion.

I must say that it did not take long for Métis people to see through the misleading press release. The bad part is they didn't see through it until after the election. I suspect that is why it was released so close to polling day, to give voters as little time as possible to scrutinize the PC's statements.