Editorials
Monday, May 12, 1997WITH an unemployment rate of 9.6 percent, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien might be expected to hunker down and wait for better times. Instead, he's called national elections for June 2, more than a year before they are required by law. Canadian Liberals are
confident of victoryChretien is not suicidal. His Liberal Party has a big lead in the polls, with the support of 41 to 50 percent of decided voters. The opposition vote is divided among four other parties. The largest of the four is the separatist Bloc Quebecois, which runs only in Quebec and is no threat to win control of Parliament. The Liberals are expected to match or exceed their current majority of 174 seats in the new 301-member legislature. Despite his lead in the polls, the prime minister was treated rudely the other day in Newfoundland. Jostling demonstrators demanding to meet Chretien blocked a news media bus that was sent in advance of his planned inauguration of an oil platform. Chretien's bus eventually had to turn back, but he was able to fly to the oil platform later by helicopter. Three hundred protesters shouted "We want jobs."
The need for more jobs is real enough in Canada, but even a 9.6 percent unemployment rate - a disaster by U.S. standards - is lower than the 11 percent when Chretien took office four years ago.
Having reduced the Canadian budget deficit, formerly among the highest among the industrialized nations, to nearly zero, Chretien argues that the stage has been set for more gains in job creation. The International Monetary Fund projects that the economy will grow by 3.5 percent this year and 3.4 percent in 1998 - the highest rate among the world's advanced economies.
The former ruling party, the Progressive Conservatives, is trying to recover from its collapse in the 1993 elections, when it won only two parliamentary seats. It shares the conservative vote with the Reform Party, which has roots in western Canada as a populist protest movement. The two parties may consider merging or some other strategy to avoid splitting the vote.
However, at this point it looks like another term in office for the centrist Liberals. This would not disturb Washington because relations with Ottawa are good, thanks largely to booming trade between the two neighbors. With another referendum on independence for Quebec expected in 2000, Chretien presumably will have the task of leading the fight to preserve Canadian unity - a matter of concern to its huge neighbor to the south.
TALK about a wild party - and one with mammoth repercussions. Jack Davis, a political operative hired by the San Francisco 49ers to oversee the team's campaign to build a new football stadium, held a party to celebrate his 50th birthday that attracted the city's political elite, including Mayor Willie Brown. The festivities caused a sensation, and no wonder, considering that they featured live sex acts, sadomasochism and male and female strippers. Campaign fumble
This is the sort of thing that gets to people. Those who are really upset could vote against the stadium as a way to express their outrage. Even in "liberated" San Francisco, it's possible to take things too far.
THE door may have finally closed on the Vietnam War with the arrival in Hanoi of the first U.S. ambassador to the former enemy. If so, it's about time. U.S. envoy to Hanoi
Twenty-two years after the last U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam boarded a helicopter on the roof of the American embassy in Saigon, Douglas "Pete" Peterson returned to the country where he had been a prisoner of war for 61/2 years.
He says this is the beginning "of a new era of constructive relations between Vietnam and the United States." And it should be. Twenty-two years of sulking over a lost war is enough.
Rupert E. Phillips, CEO
John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher
David Shapiro, Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor
