Canada: Politics: Lib rebuild - Stronach down, Ignatieff and Dion in the race for Lib Party leadership, Prime Minister
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First, Stronach Jr is out of the race, her first smart move in electoral politics. Globe and Mail's reporter Campbell Clark (Apr7,2k6) gives us the scoop(Hat Tip to Norm Spector's inestimable website for the alert):
OTTAWA -- Former human resources minister Belinda Stronach dropped out of the Liberal leadership race yesterday, citing a desire for party reform rather than her declining hopes of winning as the reason.Smart move to back away from a battle that would show her up as both an intellectual and political l+twayt. (Forgive the NuSpell, dear traditionalists, but it's time to get rid of the excessive "gh"s of Old Spell - P).The 39-year-old former Tory had quickly mounted a team to enter the race after the Liberals lost the Jan23,2k6 election, but she faced difficulty because of her weak French-language skills and her short time in the [Lib] party.
Yesterday, however, Ms. Stronach maintained she had a "decent chance" of winning but decided she could speak more freely about her belief in a new, one-member, one-vote system to elect a leader if she was not in the race.
"The Liberal Party really needs a much more profound overhaul. The leadership convention is still delegated in the old-fashioned way, so that it is about the politics of winning, not winning with ideas," she said. "I would rather see a Liberal Party with millions of members where each and every member has a direct vote. We have the technology.
"I would rather spend my energies working towards that goal than running in a system that still values political deals for delegates over the free market of ideas."
I submit that Belinda is actually in favour of a system where massive amounts of money (her greatest political strength is her personal and her father's fortunes) wins the day over face-to-face discussions and public debates where mind meets mind. She just doesn't have it. What she has is money, operational skills (which she can back up with experts at her fingertips due to her money), and technocratic values (that can only lead to handling people en masse thru advertizing on mass media like TV). That's what's behind her current 1person/1vote fetish, an obsessing that detracts from the nature of a political party thru its structured units beginning with the grassroots riding associations in each Parliamentary "voting district" (the US term), combining thru representatives into a regional grouping of riding associations gathered largely by province in the case of federal parties, and then the national party organization to which delegates from the local and regional party entities go for help, for gaining approval of individual candidacies, for conventions of delgates to select a coast-to-coast party leader, and then the representativeness of the riding-association-and-delegates system in supplying elgibles for the national governering council for that party.
Belinda's method, on the other hand, has been used by at least one of previous parties that since has been integrated into the new united federal Conservative Party of Canada; and perhaps Miss Jumper has simply forgotten just which party she is now in. The truth is that the Lib Party has special historical features which require conventions due to its traditional internal bargaining proces between Canada's "two solitudes," a permanent English-language majority of delegates but also of the national party membership, and the need recognized by the Liberals alone (from after Conserv PM Mulroney to arrival of Conserv PM Harper) to carry Quebec's French-speaking population, altho the Bloc Quebecois independentists contested well the basic Lib strategy which determined the bargaining process of the Lib conventions.
I do agree with Belinda's proposal only insofar as it could be used as a means to break the monopoly Quebec fed Libs have had in determining the party's candidates for Prime Minister; the customer alternation between English-speaking and francophone leaders having in recent times been scrapped by the Libs. That historical disparity needs to be addressed by Michael Ignatieff who parachuted in from his teaching post at Harvard to win in the January election (Etobicoke-Lakeshore riding, Ontario, English mothertongue, bilingual) and by Stéphane Dion the former Intergovernmental Affairs minister whose philosophy of federal/provincial relations is presently being displaced by the philosophy behind the detente between fed Conserv PM Steven Harper, and his provinical counterpart, Quebec Lib premier Jean Charest (Dion represents a fed Montreal riding, Quebec, French mothertongue, bilingual).
These two gentlemen emerged as official candidates the day after Belinda backed down. These are the leading brains among the fed Lib contenders, both with both political savvy and vision; however, there's also a host of lesser l+ts who want In on the battle for the Lib leadership. But Belinda has gone belly-up. So, in a future post we can turn our attention to the other dudes and dudices seeking Liberal party leadership and eventually the office of Prime Minister of Canada.
Norman the Sleuth slips in three tidbits in his own voice or quotes on the Belinda Fiasco (le fiasco belindais?):
1.) "Not since 1968 when Pierre Trudeau provoked a mania within the party and across the country has a Liberal leadership contest showcased so much cerebral cortex. With Michael Ignatieff and Stéphane Dion opting in yesterday and Belinda Stronach dropping out a day earlier, the collective leadership IQ is soaring.
2.) "'Le Devoir’s Hélène Buzzetti reports: "The word 'ideas' came up some dozens of times during Mme Stronach's half-hour press conference, but when questioned about these ideas she loves to convey, she was incapable of citing even one further example than the change of the rules for the election of the fed Lib leadership'" [My free tranlation - P]. "Le mot «idées» est revenu des dizaines de fois pendant la conférence de presse d'une demi-heure de Mme Stronach, mais lorsqu'on l'a interrogée sur ces idées qu'elle aimerait véhiculer, elle a été incapable de citer autre chose que ce changement aux règles d'élection du chef du PLC."
3.) "Steve MacKinnon, director of the Liberal party executive, said Ms. Stronach had never mentioned her zeal for a one-member/one-vote system to the executive, though Mr. McGuinty [Lib Premier of Ontario] had done so." - Politicarp
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