Do you want honesty or do you just want to get rid of the Harper Conservatives? That seems to be the conundrum facing members of Canada’s Liberal Party. The fact is that Justin Trudeau has lied to the party. He did not have much of a platform when he won the Liberal Party leadership but we all heard him promise open nominations wherein the individual party members in each electoral district would choose their candidate.
Here we are ten months before the election and the party has lawsuits, people tearing up memberships and bad feeling right across the country. It feels like tiny talent time. The leader, his incompetent team and the party apparatus have obviously disregarded Justin’s only bloody promise.
And what do they think they are accomplishing? What really smells are the silly party spokespeople who marvel at how free, open and transparent the nominations have become. Do these people take lessons in Orwellian NewSpeak from the Harper Conservatives?
Just filling out the intrusive and demeaning forms required by the Liberal Party from potential candidates is a farce. The party officials often take different lengths of time to respond to individual candidates. It seems that different candidates get different—and highly discriminatory—treatment. Just the fact of controlling when the local party can have its nomination meeting is a control factor. And back-dating membership cut offs certainly sends a clear message about which candidate is preferred.
What really galls is that this very simple promise from Justin meant so much to some of the key riding association people in the Liberal Party. These are the local organizers needed to help the candidates. The amateurs in the Trudeau team are choosing candidates who need the help these organizers can provide. Talking to a newly approved candidate recently in a riding where the Liberals can win, it was a shock to learn that he had absolutely no acquaintance with the party people in the riding. He might have potential as a candidate but he was starting with some very serious handicaps.
What also seems to be the situation is that the party offices and the Trudeau team are getting untrustworthy intelligence about many of the electoral districts. In many Conservative held ridings, the Liberal Party has broken into a series of cliques. You have to be sure you are listening to the group that has a chance of pulling the Liberal supporters in the riding together.
Only a truly open nomination process has the chance of rebuilding and renewing the Liberal Party’s riding resources. Without open nominations, you might squeak by and elect a Justin Trudeau government but you will not have a Liberal government.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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