Defection to Liberals highlights dilemma
2012Barry Weisleder 2012-02Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 8 →
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While NDP officials go to great pains to prevent leftists from becoming NDP candidates at election time, they’d do better to spend more time screening the right wingers in their ranks. A case in point is Lise St-Denis, who was elect ed NDP MP in the Quebec riding of St-Maurice-Champlain and who crossed the line to join the federal Liberals on Jan. 10. She was one of 58 NDP rookies to win a seat in Quebec last May 2. Why the sudden decision to bolt, after St-Denis spent a decade volunteering for the party?
The 71-year-old MP said she did not feel “at ease” in a party that wanted to put an end to the Canadian Forces mis sion in Libya, that called for abolition of the Senate, and that rejected any private-sector involvement in building a new bridge in Montreal. She stressed that the NDP had lost its “drawing card” in Quebec with the death of Jack Layton. But could St-Denis be as flaky as that? Could she have been unaware of basic NDP policies when she ran last Spring? Or was it a case of the party brass being unaware, or worse, unconcerned about her “ease” with perpetua tion of the status quo—including the non-elected “Upper Chamber,” imperialist interventions in the Arab countries, and private-public partnerships that undermine workers and squander public funds?
NDP MP Guy Caron, who chairs the party’s Quebec cau cus, was correct to say, “Changing political affiliation is a blatant lack of respect for democracy. If the Liberals think that this is what the voters of her riding want, we challenge them to run Ms. St-Denis in a by-election.” But there is another point to this incident. And it’s not just that the NDP was unprepared politically for the “orange wave” break through—a victim of its own success, so to speak. The point is that the party leadership recruits candidates in its own image. At its core, that image is increasingly associ ated with opportunism, lack of principles, and shallowness. Party bureaucrats and party electoral campaigns project 8 SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 2012