Thursday, 20 May 2004
Ujjal Dosanjh's convictions of convenience - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER - It was no April fool's joke when Ujjal Dosanjh joined Prime Minister Paul Martin and others, making public what has been whispered for over a year now, that the former BC NDP premier is to run for the federal Liberals at the next election, which will be called in three days.
There's so much irony in this, one doesn't know where to begin. Take the venue for the announcement. The Sheraton Wall Centre, where the Prime Minister's press conference was held, happened to be the same hotel complex where the BC Liberals stationed their election headquarters on 15 May 2001, when Gordon Campbell won the provincial election against the then NDP premier, Ujjal Dosanjh.
Forget for a moment that as a BC cabinet minister he railed against the federal government, this federal government, for more money, and this Prime Minister when he was finance minister for balancing the budget on the backs of the provinces and the poor. Forget that for a minute and realise that as a candidate, he will work under the direction of the coordinator for the Liberal campaign in BC, Mark Marrisen. Marrisen happens to be the husband of another prominent Liberal, BC Liberal cabinet minister Christy Clark, yes, the same Christy Clark who stood two sword lengths apart from Dosanjh when he was a cabinet minister in the BC Legislature. Once foes, they are now under the same tent, weaved by Paul Martin hoping for a majority government. (And isn't it odd too for someone like Gulzar Cheema, who was recently dropped from the provincial cabinet after he announced that he'd be running for the Federal Liberals at the next election? Picture this, Cheema and Dosanjh candidates for the same party, under the same leader, when Cheema won a seat in the BC Legislature, running against the record of Dosanjh and his government. Politics does make for strange bedfellows.)
Ujjal Dosanjh's political career has become a sort of success story that many like to point to when discussing immigrant life in Canada. From riding a wooden cart, pulled by two oxen in a dusty village in India, discussing the legacy of Gandhi and Nehru, to coming to Canada, to going to university to earning his law degree, to getting the crap beaten out of him by Sikh fundamentalists, to becoming a politician in the NDP government, to becoming attorney general, and then premier of the province, Ujjal Dosanjh became a well-liked and popular figure, despite the political company he kept. He seemed above the fray during the whole NDP meltdown around the time of Glen Clark's tenure as premier. He's still well liked, but that's where the civility ends. Politically, he's an opportunist, and I'd be inclined to have more faith in any of his opponents doing a better job representing the people of Vancouver South than he.
Ujjal Dosanjh was the MLA in my riding from 1991, when the NDP came into power, through to 2001, when he led them to their crushing defeat, whereby the held onto but two seats. I had run into him through the years and found him to be genial, generous with his time and pleasant. I came of age politically in the late 1990s, around the time he was appointed to the cabinet and became attorney general. When in my last year at Sir Charles Tupper Secondary in 1999/2000, around the time he was running for the NDP leadership, after the fall of Glen Clark, my social studies teacher and I decided it would be of great interest and experience to invite him and a member of the opposition BC Liberal team to our classroom for separate visits, discussing the politics of the day. The then attorney general graciously obliged and aided by my old friend Rafe Mair, I tried to hammer him on a salient political issue of the day, which, ever the old pol Dosanjh was, saw him hem and haw and spin to his credit.
Even though I realised the error in my political thinking, and found I was much more adept to small-c conservative thinking, I still voted for Dosanjh in 2001 if for no other reason but that I liked him and that I thought he could do a better job representing the riding. Alas, he lost, and spent his time exiled from politics practicing law. I paid a short visit a couple of years ago when I needed my passport renewal forms signed by a barrister. Again, he was genial and pleasant, but no doubt, the political scars of defeat still scored. I could tell that he, in his new digs and new life essentially, was not comfortable. There seemed to be little work that he wanted to do in the office, and I think smarted to return to the political fray.
In the fall of 2002, the Parliament Hill newspaper, the Hill Times ran a story whispering that Dosanjh could run for the Liberals in the next federal election. (My ego permits me to point out that when the Hill Times broke the story in Ottawa, I happened to catch the blurb and pass it onto to Rafe Mair. CKNW didn't run the presumably local story until a day or so after the Vancouver Sun, reported the story quoting the Hill Times. Obviously, the Hill Times was pleased at scooping the BC outlets, as they published a letter I wrote them complimenting them on the scoop.) Therefore, it is not with incredulity that one should greet the news of Dosanjh's Damascus-like transformation. It's been public rumour for over a year. However if one were rightfully to greet this news, it would be with dismay and sheer disappointment that Dosanjh sell out for the quickest way to another couple more initials after his name, not to mention the 'honourable' designation he'll put in front of his name if he gets into the cabinet.
David Schreck, who was one of the former premier's closest aides and colleagues, in the run up to Dosanjh's bid for the NDP leadership in 1999, has criticised his former boss, saying the move to the Liberals was opportunistic. Schreck resigned his position in the Premier's office, when Dosanjh rejected Schreck's advice to call an earlier election. Dosanjh refused to take that advice and kept hanging on longer until that ignominious defeat of but two seats in the 2001 election. Schreck charges that the former premier was holding out in an effort to impress federal Liberals so as to procure for himself a Senate seat. (And let's not forget too, in that campaign in 2001, when one week before polling day, Dosanjh all but wrote off campaigning outside the Lower Mainland, capitulating that the NDP had no hope in winning any seats outside Vancouver. Though he was right, leaders do not fold up and give up the fight.)
Ujjal Dosanjh may very well become a good representative of Vancouver South in Parliament, inevitably at the cabinet table. However, his appointment by a leader who promised to slay the democratic deficit, so obviously reeks of hypocrisy and hubris. The recent scrambling of Prime Minister Martin, of either kicking up current MPs into newly created patronage posts, or in the Dosanjh case in Vancouver South, or Bill Cunningham in Burnaby-Douglas appointing candidates outright, sends a message to the voters in those ridings. The message is that those outside of Ottawa don't seem to get it right when picking candidates to run for office. Ever patronising Ottawa must step in and do it for us. One can only hope voters will remember this condescending arrogance next month on election day. Especially, those voters in Vancouver South.
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An archive of Joseph Planta's previous columns can be found by clicking HERE .