Democracy is participatory, or at least it should be, for both the candidate and the electorate. On Monday, May 2 we go to the polls once again to make the decision about who will be governing us for the foreseeable future.
This federal election has been not much more than a mild irritant for most of the people in these parts. At least, that’s what we hear on the streets. Only one of the candidates is really known in the community and the others are not. When someone runs for government, whether it is local, regional or national they should have made that decision a long time before the writ was dropped. They should have been boning up on the central issues in the communities they represent and they should make a point of being visible. None of the current candidates made much effort to see and be seen in Sooke, and if they did they didn’t let anyone know about it. By next week it will all be over and the only chance anyone had to pay heed to what they had to say was a mere few days before the ballots were filled out.
It’s been said before in the pages of this paper and it is being said again. If you want the 12,000 plus votes in the Sooke region, you better make yourself known because, I suspect, most people vote for the man/woman and not the party. The party is too far removed from us while the MP should not be. Dr. Keith Martin will be missed as he was always here, always available. We knew who he was and what he, as a person, stood for.
Let’s see if we can’t do a little better in the upcoming municipal election. Wouldn’t it be amazing to have a 50 per cent voter turnout? Then we could say we are a democracy — or at least half a democracy.