Another federal campaign is underway and once again the Souris-Moose Mountain Constituency race promises to be another near-embarrassing runaway episode for incumbent Conservative Ed Komarnicki.
If your collective memories serve you well, you will recall that Komarnicki re-captured the local constituency seat with a huge majority in 2008, thanks in large part to the fact that the other two supposed major parties pretty well conceded the seat on the first day of the campaign.
The Liberals didn't even bother to phone it in. They chose to run the now infamous phantom candidate, somebody named Marlin Belt, who never showed up to campaign, couldn't be reached by telephone or e-mail and was a literal non-entity, at least in Souris-Moose Mountain.
No doubt that insult to the constituency will be recalled by several voters. The Liberals will be hard pressed to win any votes outside of their expected "loyal to a fault" followers. Those might well be the same ones who thought Pierre Trudeau was a good prime minister for Western Canada.
On the New Democratic Party side, the situation was only slightly more positive. They at least had the gumption to provide a warm body in the form of a parachuted University of Regina teenaged candidate who wasn't quite certain what constituency she was running in at the start of the campaign but eventually sorted it out, did some homework and at least provided some spark to the feeble NDP effort.
The understaffed, underdeveloped and underfinanced Green Party provided a token candidate as well, who hailed from the local area. It became evident early on that Komarnicki's well oiled campaign machine was going to run roughshod over these pretenders, as well it should have due to the feckless efforts made by these supposed major parties.
It now appears as if we're going to be treated to a repeat performance since neither the Liberals or NDP have managed to stir any interest in the constituency in the form of candidates or even rumours of candidates.
With a short-term campaign to wage over the next month and a half, it will probably become quite evident again that the NDP and Liberals are caught unprepared even though the possibility of an election had been looming for over a year.
They have expressed no interest in Souris-Moose Mountain, and we expect the electorate in this constituency will return the favour at the ballot box.
To Komarnicki's credit, we expect he will once again charge up the campaign team, organize a schedule, select a campaign manager, visit centres throughout south and southeast Saskatchewan, agree to debate whomever eventually shows up to represent the other sides, and generally conduct himself like something we should expect from a legitimate candidate.
Voters in Souris-Moose Mountain should have the privilege of becoming engaged in a real live campaign this time around, but alas, we fear that we're in for something similar to what we had to endure during the last one.
We're going to hold a federal election campaign around here in 2011 but we can only hope more than one person shows up.
And isn't that a sad commentary on the state of our democratic system of governance?
