AND the next MP for Vancouver East is …

Jenny Kwan, the NDP MLA from Vancouver-Mount Pleasant … IF she wins the NDP nomination contest by defeating, among others, another NDP MLA: Mable Elmore, the MLA from Vancouver-Kensington.

That is because the NDP candidate who will be replacing retiring NDP MP Libby Davies will be running in a riding that has always elected the candidate from the NDP and its predecessor, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, except in 1974 and 1993. Those two

defeats occurred, as one newspaper report put it, “when the Liberals won a national majority during periods when unpopular provincial NDP governments were in power in B.C.”

One-quarter of this riding’s population is supposed to be ethnic Chinese and that gives Kwan a distinct advantage over Elmore, an ethnic Filipino.

An email from “elect Jenny Kwan” to media on Friday titled “Jenny Kwan to host media conference, 1PM Sunday Jan 25” said: “Jenny Kwan will be joined by community leaders in the federal riding of Vancouver-East, at the Aboriginal Friendship Centre, 1607 East Hastings Street, 1 PM, Sunday January 25th.”