FREDRICTON—Stephen Harper is conducting himself like an absolute “king,” says Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, in a federal election that is shaping up as a debate over two interpretations of the Constitution.

It was a frustrated Ignatieff who lashed out at the Conservative leader Wednesday, accusing him of putting an imperial spin on the choice facing voters.

Harper is warning that if Canadians don’t give him a majority government on May 2, a nefarious “coalition” of opposition parties will seize power and run the country into a “black hole” of economic peril and national unity crises. Asked if he would be willing to soften his agenda to reach a consensus with others in another minority mandate — the predicted outcome of most opinion polls — Harper was defiant.

“I don’t accept that question,” he told reporters Wednesday in Rivière-du-Loup, Que.

That was just about enough for Ignatieff, who has been campaigning hard on the need to revitalize a Canadian democracy he says the Tories have trampled and muddied over five years in power.

“Who does he think he is — the king here?” Ignatieff asked.

In an interview with CBC-TV Tuesday, he spelled out the challenges the next minority prime minister would face. He said whichever party ends up with the most seats after the election comes up with an agenda that the majority of MPs can support, regardless of party affiliation.

If the party loses that support, the Governor General can ask the second-place party to try to assume power rather than call an election, and he said if he was asked to do so he would sit down with the NDP’s Jack Layton, Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe and even Harper to work through the political impasse.

But the onus would fall first to a re -elected Harper minority government, Ignatieff said Wednesday in St. John, N.B.

“Of course he has to put water in his wine.”

It’s not exactly the talk of a confident frontrunner, and many pundits have already concluded that the squabbling over coalitions and parliamentary rules proves Harper has succeeded in defining what question will be top of mind for voters heading to the polls.

Ignatieff has attempted to make health care the central issue of the election, but he has also been pounding the Tories as autocrats whose only feeling for democracy is disdain.

“What we’re watching is a sort of gladiatorial combat . . . between political parties. One of the things that’s in play is the truth,” said Queen’s University political scientist Ned Franks.

It’s up to Ignatieff, Layton and Duceppe to counter Harper’s “flights of fancy and misrepresentation” and ensure the coalition debate is grounded in the facts and rules that govern the Canadian Parliament, he said. “If they don’t do that it’s their fault.”

Britain, Australia, New Zealand and India – all the major Commonwealth countries – are run by coalition governments. So are most democracies in Europe.

“To say that coalitions are somehow illegitimate or not in tradition is just utter nonsense,” Franks said.

Harper has shown no willingness so far to compromise if he gets a third-straight minority mandate.

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He has pledged that if he is re-elected he will reintroduce the budget that was rejected by his opponents just before the election was called. He also says he will introduce an omnibus crime bill containing all the criminal justice legislation that wasn’t dealt with in the last Parliament and pass it into law within 100 days.

It’s a continuation of the strong-man style that has led Harper’s Tories through the last five years in power. And the choice facing voters is more of that, he says, or the uncertainty of a three-party coalition.

“We don’t know what that government will stand for, what parts of its platform it will agree with or not agree with, but we do know the general outlines,” he said. “There’s no focus on the economy, there are tax hikes and of course these parties have very dangerous and conflicting views on national unity and constitutional matters.”

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