Now why is it that when you need to get in touch with someone with political power, you can’t, and when you do see them, it’s because their face is plastered on every porch bulletin board in town asking for our support? Argh! The irony! Yep, it’s election time again.

This is the third time for me writing about elections in these notes and I’m beginning to observe an interesting and re-occurring pattern in different election platforms (only made possible by my keen awareness and casual observations). The first definite pattern is that they all say that our lives will be better in the future if we elect them and in some ways, this is true in most instances. Saying something positive helps encourage voters to cast in that direction. The second is the promise of jobs for the youth, but getting out of bed to go to work is hard for many. But this promise is being delivered at this moment, so saying that employment will increase is true and good to hear for the others who really want to work hard for their paycheque.

The third is saying our health requires healing, but this takes commitment and making the right choices and perhaps a tear or two will help. This is true, healing helps. Saying this is a sure bet to get some votes from the hurtin’. As Albert Golo said on North of 60, “Indian pain is big business.”

Then there are the speeches of back to roots and nature that are a safe bet and sure thing for votes. Strangely, seemingly like magic, they (the contenders) appear in the middle of the bush touting the good old traditional values to no end. This part is seemingly true, where our old ways are practiced using new-fangled inventions. This speech somehow manages to get mingled with forestry management and mining and sounds greatly justifiable when mixed together with large sums of money.

There’s always the pledge to fulfill the JBNQA and bring the feds back to the table and this is good for a few votes from die hard politicos, late night radio ramblers and lengthy-story-teller-meeting/general assembly-interrupters.

Now, when you think about it, the traditional voter turnout is dismally low statistically and really, who is listening out there to what everyone has to say? Obviously a few concerned citizens who duly show up and cast their opinion for their favoured leader. They get what they want from the speeches and rightfully so. If I didn’t show up to meetings and elections, I would never get what I want from these contenders for the Cree Nation throne and all that talk would be nothing but hot air, but like I noted before, almost all platforms are good for voters and are actually being worked on now. So I call a close three- to four-way election with no one really catching everyone’s ear.

A good politician always has a winning speech handy and a hanky for the lady if the votes swerve the other way. The good politician always has a parachute job to bail him out when the losing comes a calling. A poor politician always loses and a perfect politician, well… haven’t met one yet.