Even in Julius Caesar’s day, the Rubicon was a very shallow river. Caesar’s legion waded across. Justin Trudeau dives in and ends up looking silly.
When writing about the metaphorical Rubicon that young Trudeau faced in Toronto’s Trinity-Spadina riding, we were talking about his relationship with the Liberal Party. Instead of listening to the party, he is getting things screwed up even worse.
Instead of meeting with Christine Innes to resolve the questions about her candidacy, he gets pictures in the newspapers inviting Toronto Councillor Adam Vaughan to run for the Liberals in that riding. This is not solving the problem. This is making matters worse.
First of all, Adam Vaughan has a long way to go to establish some bona fides as a liberal. While the Liberal Party is a very welcoming and broad-based party, Mr. Vaughan has been keeping some very bad company for a long time. And there was not much love for his father as a liberal during Colin Vaughan’s years in Toronto television news.
There is no need to rehash the Trinity-Spadina situation but for Adam Vaughan to agree to not compete with MP Chrystia Freeland for the new riding of University-Rosedale next year is idiocy. That is a party decision and for Justin Trudeau to interfere in that party decision makes a liar out of him. Chrystia Freeland can stand on her own two feet. No candidate who needs to be coddled by the party leader is worth electing.
Four years ago, long before he became leader, Trudeau was hearing about the need for democracy in the party and he made it very clear throughout his campaign for the leadership that he wanted an open and democratic party. He is now making a mockery of his own promises.
What Trudeau has to understand is that you can hardly run a democracy with totalitarian tactics. Canadians are becoming more and more detached from politics because they do not see politics serving them. They can no longer relate through their local member of parliament to what is happening in Canada and around the world. This person fails to represent them because he or she represents their party and its leader instead of the voter.
So smarten up Justin. There are few chances to doing the job right.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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