Canada's General Election Looks Like a Bad Kabuki Performance

Normally, I find Canadian General Elections to be rather boring. For 150 plus years, Canadians have been governed by either the red party or the blue party. Now, since neither party can attract 40% of the popular vote, the election is decided by which party will receive the benefit of the systemic distortions that the first-past-the-post voting method brings about. In the last election, the red party was awarded all of the 61 seats available in the Maritimes although it had only received 56% of the popular vote there. This was enough to give the red party a majority of seats in Parliament and full control of the government. No wonder the leader of the red party, Justin Trudeau, reneged on his electoral promise of changing the voting system.

But this general election is turning out to be something different. It reminds me of the Japanese traditional theater, Kabuki, in which the actors dress up in vivid costumes, wear a lot of make up, and strike dramatic poses to make contact with the audience.

In the Canadian version, Justin Trudeau has had photos of him unearthed, revealing him dressed up like a genie from the Arabian Nights, wearing dark brown make up. Say no more. A picture is worth a thousand words, but this time the staging has gone awry.

Coming after a multitude of photos showing how cool our Prime Minister was supposed to be, these photos suggest something totally different. Without his staff photographer there to stage the shot, these photos suggest the real character of the person playing out his role in our political theater, one that is certainly not very flattering.

In this case, the pose, the costume, and especially the make up shout out racist hypocrite.

My oh my, how is the audience going to react? Certainly, many Canadians will feel like they were duped into thinking that Justin Trudeau embodied the values of social justice. Looking at these photos along with the video showing him as a young man wearing black face, I can't help but think that a great many voters who voted for the red party in the last election will either vote for the green party or decide to sit out this election and not go to the polls.

So the only real question left to be decided in this is whether Trudeau's abysmal Kabuki moment will be enough to oust him as Canada's Prime Minister.

Fortunately, this crappy telenovella will soon be over.