Canadians voted for a sharp change in their government, electing Justin Trudeau as its prime minister and resoundingly ending Conservative Stephen Harper’s near-decade in office. The new leader, 43, won his ticket by promising to raise taxes on the rich and run deficits for three years to boost government spending.His resounding victory comes four decades after the then US President Richard Nixon predicted Trudeau would lead Canada one day.And it means he can continue the legacy of his father Pierre Trudeau, one of the country’s most popular prime ministers ever. His win – in which his Liberal Party took 184 of Parliament’s 338 seats – was not only applauded by his father’s left-leaning fans but also by swooning women around the world, who took to social media to dub tall, dark and handsome Trudeau in the world’. Trudeau is the firstborn of a former dashing prime minister who drew comparisons to John F. Kennedy after rising to power in 1968 on a wave of support dubbed ‘Trudeaumania.’ The architect of Canada’s version of the Bill of Rights, Pierre Trudeau remains to this day one of the few Canadian politicians widely known to Americans. The new prime minister is very much a man of the people, or so the impression that his handlers give would have us believe. He is in tune with the Asian sector of his electorate — photographed dressed in shalwar kameez eating in a mosque, and dancing a sharp set of bhangra moves in a video clip that has gone viral. The morning after he was elected, he was seen glad-handing travellers on the underground and the social media was awash with images, not all in the best possible taste, of Canada’s new prime minister. It is of note that two Canadian women of Pakistan origin were also elected to parliament on the same day in the biggest political upset since 1984 when the Conservatives won. Once the brouhaha has died down, there is serious work to do. And promises to fulfil, one of which was quickly to the fore as the new prime minister called President Barack Obama to tell him that Canadian warplanes were no longer to be a part of the coalition currently bombing Syria. He is pledged to run a budget deficit and tax the rich. He sees Canada increasing its quota of immigrants and refugees, and he looks to the south in the hope of improving Canadian relations with the US, not always harmonious in recent years. His honeymoon will be short, and the man who was a distant third in the polls at the start of the campaign is going to have to shed the frivolity associated with victory.
pk.shafaqna.com
