Editorial

Who is Habby Sharkawi?

In the relentless pursuit of an actual election race in the Lesser Slave Lake riding, we do our best to profile each candidate. The last thing voters need is too little information about whoever is trying to unseat the reigning Tory.
It turns out this time the voters are in luck. Both the New Democrat and Liberal candidates are not just another pair of parachute candidates, dropped in to make their parties appear truly provincial.
In the case of New Democratic Party candidate Habby Sharkawi, she’s a High Prairie resident, born and raised, although she has been living in Edmonton lately.
The NDP may not have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning out here in rural Alberta, but at least a local person with some standing in the community could help make a real race of it. It would be good for the health of democracy, in other words.
Real debate of the issues, between three or more credible candidates would be very good. Of course any candidate can be credible if the voters decide he or she is. But it’s rare that any challenger has that sort of prominence in more than one community in what is, let’s face it, a huge area.
The Liberal candidate, Steve Noskey, has his work cut out for him too. He’s from Little Buffalo and probably not very well known in Slave Lake or High Prairie – the two biggest population centres in the riding. He’s got three weeks left to convince the voters to go against tradition.
Perhaps the most effective way for a candidate to score points is at candidate forums. It’s a great opportunity for voters to compare the candidates, each against the others.
The date of the Slave Lake forum had not been confirmed as of press time. But when the chance comes up, take the time to get out and find out who your candidates are.
On another note...
It’s too bad nobody is holding the Green Party banner locally in this election. It’s questionable whether the Greens’ could run the province properly (although what’s ‘proper’ is open to debate), but they serve an important purpose that only gets lip service from mainstream parties.
A vote for the Greens, while it wouldn’t elect anybody in these parts, nevertheless sends a message to whoever does get elected. It says, ‘We’re worried about the state of the environment, and we don’t think the traditional parties are paying enough attention.’
If 10 per cent of the vote goes that way, the powers that be have to start paying attention. That’s the value of the protest vote. Without it, the winners are safe to assume that everything is hunky dory.
Everything isn’t hunky dory though. The polar ice is melting. Caribou and polar bears are threatened. The world is pumping billions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. And our government is very, very timid about doing anything about it, for fear of disrupting the economy.
Too bad the opportunity for an environmental protest vote isn’t there this time.