BY HARRY S. LALI
Former NDP minister
THE ouster of BCNDP leadership hopeful Anjali Appadurai by the panic-stricken and calculating BCNDP brass is shocking and revolting. The BCNDP is afraid of a young, energetic, intelligent, articulate, photogenic 32-year-old woman of Asiatic descent with her ability to skillfully hold her opponents’ feet to the fire in debates. By disqualifying her, the BCNDP makes a mockery of its “equity policy.”
Past leaders David Barret, Michael Harcourt and Glen Clark welcomed and encouraged open debate by rank-and-file members on important and, sometimes, controversial issues at Party conventions and meetings. They believed in lively policy discussion and debate – a fundamental right of card-carrying members and supporters and a necessary bed-rock principle of the New Democratic Party. But, not in today’s BCNDP!
Policy debates at BCNDP conventions are a thing of the 20th Century, long since replaced by boring filler speeches, workshops and individual MLA glorification. Party “policy” is pre-determined by the Leader’s Office and a select few establishment figures behind closed doors and presented at convention as a fait accompli under carefully orchestrated “rules” that prevent amendments from the floor or honest debate. The establishment’s preferred or ‘anointed’ leadership candidate gets to dictate the rules and control the agenda for the leadership race, Party Constitution be damned! Energetic, ambitious, upstart individuals with fresh new, dynamic ideas like Ms. Appadurai, are suspiciously seen as a threat by those who wield power.
The ugly use of a sledge-hammer by the BCNDP to disqualify Ms. Appadurai is mind-boggling. Elizabeth Cull, the BCNDP’s chief electoral officer, was given a pre-determined conclusion in search of “evidence” against Ms. Appadurai and her campaign. Her rationale for recommending disqualification for Ms. Appadurai is suspect. The Party should be making the time and resources available to do a proper audit of the membership list. The current BCNDP is flush with money (forcibly taken from constituency associations’ per-vote Elections BC rebates) and say they can’t find the time and resources to do a fair investigation and audit??? Unbelievable!!!
During BCNDP leadership races in 2000 and again in 2011, the Party brass found the time and resources (in times when the BCNDP was nearly broke), performed audits and threw out any illegal memberships. Given that there were huge abuses by a campaign in 2000, such as signing 58 members at one address in Burnaby, no one was disqualified. In 2011, a campaign team brought in thousands of memberships without funds (which arrived separately in bags and envelopes after the deadline for submitting memberships and money had passed). The dollar notes were stapled to forms the next day, but no one was disqualified from the race. Instead, the Party turned a blind eye to these abuses of rules because they were “preferred” candidates. The question to ask is: What would the BCNDP brass have done if David Eby’s campaign had been accused instead of Ms Appadurai’s?
Gone are the days when informed grassroots input and debate evidently informed BCNDP policy. Gone are the days when BCNDP Executive and leadership positions were filled through free and fair elections at convention. That was the BCNDP of my parents and the one I grew up with; first voted for in 1975; and later joined and proudly served as MLA and Cabinet Minister in. That BCNDP is long gone. The current rendition of the BCNDP is not your parents’ or my parents’ Party. If Dave Barrett and my own parents were alive today and saw how a young, female, Asiatic leadership hopeful was being treated by the BCNDP in an unjust, contemptuous and undemocratic fashion they would hang their heads in shame.
(EDITOR: The views expressed here are those of Harry S. Lali and do not necessarily reflect The VOICE’s opinion.)
