Canada 2019 Federal Election
We vote to express pleasure or displeasure about the current state of the nation. We vote for a better tomorrow, and I don’t mean John Woo’s classic movie starring Yun-Fat Chow and Leslie Cheung.
Canada as a nation is like the medley of fall colors in Algonquin Forest but, and it’s a big but, they don’t lose their individual color. Impossible right?
These colors are voters, in this historic Canadian federal election. They are not eye, face, hair or religious color. It is individual color in our minds, nurtured by our experience at the candidates’ hands. Yes, we have never met the candidates, but they represent something to us, individually.
You’re wrong, you say. They are running under the Liberal Party, Conservative Party, New Democratic Party, Green Party or People’s Party marathon. Yes and no. Yes, because all parties have manifestos or shopping lists that claim: ‘we will do one, two and three if we win the shopping trolley.’
No, because candidates, in their human form are more tangible and visible, rather than long documents about what political parties stand for. That is why debates have been Twitterized, shouting matches trying to say something in 280 T.V. characters.
That is where the colors of Algonquin Forest come in. They are mental colors, rewind colors, backspace colors. I will vote like this because this candidate or that candidate is responsible for my pain or happiness at work.
‘I’ll never forget how I lost my job so that they can give it to their own.’
‘I’ll be forever grateful for what they did to push my promotion.’
Once again, you have never met the man or woman who wants to be Canada’s Prime Minister but you equate him or her with some color in your life.
Canadians travel a lot, where they sing the same song: ‘I’m not American.’ They have reasons for saying that and they will back it up with how they will vote on the 21st of October, 2019.
By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.
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