kiwi

Nope not here in NZ, he/she acting as PM would be asked do you have the confidence of the house in asking for it to be shut down. Parliament is supreme here and a PM believing he/she had special powers would get short shrift. A PM can only be a PM if that person has the confidence of the house anything else is a dictatorship. And the easy question is would Harper survive a confidence motion ?

As a neutral conservative type I am astonished that your GG overrode the will of your Parliament. She did not bother asking if the head of the Conservatives had the confidence of the house. It reminds one of Charles 1st or Cromwell type behavior by Harper. What on earth was your GG afraid of, that Harper would ask the Queen to fire her ?

Not accountable, they are accountable to their party and the voters who put them them in parliament. A lot of us would prefer STV over MMP but both the tories and Labour pushed for MMP if they could not keep FPP. But it does have the advantage of being a democratic system of government in comparison with say the UK where Labour only got 35% of the vote but eneded up in power.

Been following this political drama with some interest. A question, can Harper dump the Canadian GG and replace her with someone who will do his bidding when it comes to a decision on letting the other Canadian parties form a government ? I take it like NZ the PM of the day picks who will be the GG ? Or would that be too cynical even for politics ?