I don’t see any pressing need to add to the chorus of disapproval over Ujjal Dosanjh’s acceptance of Paul Martin’s nomination-by-fiat in Vancouver South…
…except to ask if there’s any kind of underlying logic at all to this statement:
“I’ve fought my share of nomination battles and I’ve got those scars, but when you make a decision like this in the kind of time-frame that I have in the last couple weeks, at that point, the prime minister has the prerogative and the power to make an appointment.”
As far as I can tell, Dosanjh is arguing that once you rack up enough Air Miles as a New Democrat, you’re allowed to cash them in for a free Liberal nomination. Provided, of course, that you’re in a hurry — even, or maybe especially, if that time crunch is one of your own making.
After all, the past year and a half has seen enough Ujjal-as-Liberal-candidate trial balloons being floated over the city’s south end to force the airport to reroute traffic. If he genuinely hasn’t been wondering about his candidacy until a few weeks ago, he’s the only one.
Still, people’s views evolve. Everyone in politics does the calculus as to how much you’re willing to sacrifice to implement your surviving principles. Dosanjh’s calculations — weighing whatever he can achieve against the damage he’s done to the party and the members who worked their hearts out for him in the most punishing provincial election on record (not that I’m bitter) — may make me blanch, but he’s the one who has to live with them.
What would be intolerable would be to have someone like Dosanjh accept this short-circuiting of the democratic process after he’d spent the past year, say, trumpeting his commitment to ending the democratic deficit.
Enter Paul Martin, who claims that appointing nominees isn’t anti-democratic. “It’s part of the process of ensuring that we have the kinds of men and women who are going to represent British Columbia or other provinces at the national table.”
Except this isn’t the process — it’s circumventing the process. Presumably Paul Martin has the vision to identify the Right Kind of People™… a far-sightedness that his party’s members just don’t have.
But wait a moment. If you can’t trust your own party to chose the right people… how can you trust the voters?
Or, to put it another way, why not cut out the middleman? Don’t just appoint Dosanjh as a candidate. Appoint him as an MP. Appoint the entire House of Commons. And get rid of the democratic deficit by scrapping democracy altogether.
Now that’s process.
