Discussion on the Election Results

The Narrative of a Divided Vote and Polarization Is a Creation of Desperate Forces

– Normand Chouinard –

The counting of ballots was not even over when the monopoly-controlled media and pundits began speaking about how divided and polarized Canada is following the October 21 election that resulted in a Liberal minority government. Social media and newspapers are inundated with maps of Canada separated by the colours of the political parties that won seats. Not only is Canada said to be divided according to “popular” allegiances to political parties, Quebec is also allegedly fragmented between Liberal voters in Montreal and Laval and voters who, in the regions, cast their ballot for the Bloc Québécois and, in the Quebec City area, for the Conservatives. An attempt is being made to present these divisions as the social fabric representative of the Quebec nation and of Canada.

For these experts and pundits who serve as the mouthpieces of the ruling elite and of the Anglo-Canadian state, Canadians are not citizens of one political body with equal rights and duties. Canada is not a country made up of the First Nations, the Quebec nation and people of Canada. Far from it, Canada is portrayed as disparate categories of what are called “people with opposing values.” For them there is no working class nor any other social class, each with the imprint of its own relations of humans to humans and humans to nature. Distinct working class interests reveal themselves as needs and claims on society while distinct ruling class interests reveal themselves as self-serving narrow interests which seize whatever they can get away with. The people are regarded as “vote banks” in the service of the interests of so-called major electoral parties.

These “experts” and pundits will never admit that the colours they have used to dress-up the map of Canada are in fact the result of factional infighting amongst the Anglo-Canadian state’s ruling circles. What do the disparities of the vote reveal if not the fact that what are called democratic institutions are anachronistic? They were created to sort out the differences between the factions of the ruling class and keep the people as spectators to the rule over them. Today, elections no longer act to smooth over the contradictions in the ranks of the ruling elites, while the people are more and more creating opportunities to speak in their own name, and not permit their name to be usurped by those who do not in fact represent them. Today elections are functioning to perpetuate a climate of civil war within the ranks of the rulers who demand that the people line up with one side or the other. They have nothing to do with expressing a popular will and political demands of the Canadian and Quebec peoples, nor of the Indigenous peoples.

Normand Chouinard is a member of the Executive of the Workers’ Centre of CPC(M-L).

This article was published in:

Renewal Update No. 43, October 24, 2019

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Discussion on the Election Results: The Narrative of a Divided Vote and Polarization Is a Creation of Desperate Forces – Normand Chouinard