February 12, 2000
Delegates, Dosanjh and other decisions - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER - As Managing Editor of Tupper’s coverage of the NDP Leadership Convention, next week, I sent myself on Thursday night to cover the Vancouver-Kensington delegate selection meeting. Kensington is the riding Ujjal Dosanjh calls his own in the Legislature, and I call home. Mr. Dosanjh floated the room, winning over everyone with his smile and his genuine cordial nature. As a member of the party, I naturally sauntered up to the front table and registered and signed for my membership.
The room was filled, not to the rafters, but a good crowd for a Thursday night. NDPers, mainly Indo-Canadians, filled the room with an eagerness that is totally the result of a really long leadership race. I sat and then Dosanjh took the mike and spoke briefly with sheer eloquence, without the charm, wit or sheer magnetism of a Corky Evans or even a Gordon Wilson.
We were then subjected to formal-esque nomination and acceptance process, that looked awfully pre-planned. We were then given a ballot of 22 candidates for delegateship to the convention, of which 18 we would have to elect. The meeting was boring, drab and rather tedious, so the natural reaction was to split after they unlocked the doors.
Sure, it was tedious, but that’s democracy. It’s tedious and yawn provoking. That’s how power is dealt with and where the policy and jazz like that is shaped.
On the subject of the bulk sign-ups, I have done careful thinking and I think it is a bad thing to have had happen to an already beleaguered bunch. It is bad management, bad leadership and bad campaigning, at its baddest, or worse depending on your point of view. I think that some of this was pre-planned on the parts of some candidates already involved. It is no coincidence that the mistakes are found in Indo-Canadian households as two of the four campaigns have some Indo-Canadian people within it.
At face value the story is minuscule, but if a party can screw up like this now, what will they do when they’re in power. (Hopefully not again.) From now until the convention, and the minute His Excellency Mr. Gardom, swears in the new Premier, the NDP has serious soul-searching and conscious digging for the answer. They have to repair greatly and tell themselves that they can’t keep blaming everyone but themselves. They’ve screwed up bad, in office as a government and now as a party. To be a member of it is embarrassing, definitely showing they shouldn’t hold power anymore.
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