June 26, 2000
Stock’s ahead, but for how long? - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER -- Stockwell Day emerged Saturday night as the winner of the first ballot in the contest for the leadership of the Canadian Alliance. With about 50% of the eligible 213,000 or so members of the CA, casting ballots, Day took almost 44% of the votes compared to Preston Manning’s 36%.
The evening started around 5:30 Calgary time with the first results trickling onto the convention floor. There were a bunch of glitches as the telephone results took as long to get released as the paper ballots. I cast my ballot at a local community centre in the afternoon, and I should have taken the scene there as foreshadowing of the night to come. The ballot box was almost a mockery of democracy. It was one of those old wine boxes that the liquor store puts out back for buyers to take home for moving and packing etc. The insignia of Smirnoff was covered by pieces of white paper and an opening up top was cut so us voters could deposit our ballots.
I was given my ballot which I proceeded to mark. There was a bugger sitting in a chair, who could see who I marked off and I must admit I felt a little uncomfortable. Even though I have publicly professed my intention to vote for Stockwell Day, when the guy turned his head and saw me put an ‘X’ by his name, it made me think of the concept of the secret ballot and how secret it actually was.
With the ballots being counted across the country, balding Peter Mansbridge, excitable Jason Moscovitz and journalistic suck Don Newman were on the CBC and CBC Newsworld practising the trade of punditry. While tubby Mike Duffy and the grumpy Craig Oliver did coverage for CTV Newsnet. I have to admit, I found the CBC broadcast more watchable. CPAC, which would have won my viewing vote made everyone look pale and on top of that they had no good pundits on. The CTV telecast had the weather and Oracle logo across the bottom of the screen, which proved distracting and a tad tasteless.
The first results arrived at around 6:00 (Calgary time) with Stockwell Day leading in minor telephone balloting results. The figures were in the hundreds so there was no real trend established. Then the back and forth of the top spot went between Manning and Day for the next couple of hours and by 8:00 the difference was getting bigger. At one point Day reached a 10% difference between Manning.
The evening was a true downer for Preston Manning. The looks of disbelief and disappointment were evident on his face. (I had predicted in this column on Friday, much like the rest of the country that Manning would be leading.) The bags under his eyes, as his lips, quivered as he entered the convention hall and took futile congratulations from his supporters. Manning had gone low-key in his campaigning, thus over estimating the actual support he had, perhaps coffee parties weren’t the way to go. The party he founded didn’t really turn it’s back on him, and he had to expect that when he put his leadership on the line. Nonetheless, when it finally sunk in it probably hurt.
The overall results (Day-44%, Manning-36%, Long-19%, Martin-1% and Stachow-0.17%) surprised me. I had expected Manning to be leading on the first ballot and although the end result ended in the 30-40% range I had set forth, I hadn’t expected anyone besting that. I expected Tom Long’s percentage of votes to be larger. I had predicted a three-way split between Day, Long and Manning, but I guess the folks in Gaspé were all celebrating St. Jean Baptise Day.
Keith Martin’s result, as I said in Friday’s column, was a surprise. I expected him to get a 5-10% of the vote, but even 5% ended up to be too much. He like Mr. Stachow loose their $25,000 deposit, as they failed to receive more than 5% of the vote.
Dr. Martin really isn’t in any position to endorse anyone anymore and so the role of kingmaker falls squarely on Tom Long.
The pleas from Manning and Day in their speeches, “We need you Tom!,” “The party needs you, Canada needs you!,” were genuine pleas for their votes to be transferred to the remaining candidates who will square off in the second and final ballot on July 8th.
Now, I’m holding out my prediction on who’ll win that one, for now. Two weeks in politics is a lifetime and anything and everything could happen. The Canadian Alliance will be more and more divided as the next 14 days progress. The polarisation of new versus the old will be trotted out by both candidates and the media. Whoever the leader is, they’ll have a hell of time putting it all back together.
The Liberals stand and watch, not knowing to smile or to be scared.
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An archive of Joseph Planta's previous columns can be found by clicking HERE .