This is Sunday
March 3, 2013 and B.C.’s Liberal Premier Christy Clark will either decide or be
told what the near future holds for her as the party leader and provincial premier. Today at 4PM an emergency meeting of her Cabinet may offer her three options: 1) Clark steps down; 2) Clark stays but the cabinet distance themselves from her; 3) Cabinet manages all issues from now on.
A week
has just ended with scandal threatening the Liberal party following the NDP’s Wednesday
disclosure of a 17-page multicultural outreach strategy, better called scandal, because it
links top government officials to a controversial Liberal party plan to attract
the ethnic vote in advance of the May 14th election. Then on Friday
a spreadsheet was also leaked suggesting that the Liberal party was using government
staff and resources for this effort. Premier Clark has been avoiding reporters
all week and she did not appear in the Legislature to communicate her apology
for this disgrace but had Rich Coleman read it. Premier Clark has
communicated that she has launched an internal investigation, yet even
as she did this she had to accept the resignation of her own Deputy Chief of
Staff, Kim Haakstad.
Premier
Clark is scheduled to meet with the full Liberal caucus on Monday at the
Legislature. However, she will first be attending a last-minute meeting with
some Liberal MPs on Sunday March 3rd at 4 PM in Vancouver. The Province disclosed that Premier Clark called this Cabinet meeting and that a
Clark spokesperson denied that this was an emergency meeting. That may be a
spin, since according to Global News, it was several concerned Liberal cabinet
ministers who have called an emergency meeting with Clark at that scheduled
time and place. Likely she called it at
their demand. She needs to do this to reasonably hope to control damage to her
and to her party’s re-election prospects. This is correctly an emergency for
Christy herself.
Angus Reid poll,
puts the NDP ahead of the Liberals by a whopping 16 percentage points. Ethnic
communities have been offended and insulted so analysts think that even more
Liberal support will be stripped away because of the ethnic outreach
scandal. Laws of probability indicated
it’s going to get worse if all remains the same within the Liberal caucus and inner
circle of Christy confidants. Vancouver Sun reporter Jonathan Fowlie has
tweeted a suggestion that cabinet ministers are going to offer the premier
three options: 1) Clark steps down; 2) Clark stays but the cabinet distance
themselves from her; 3) Cabinet manages all issues from now on.
Postscript: Premier Clark did not step down and following the emergency Cabinet meeting she announced that they are solidly united in Cabinet. Today her entire caucus meets, and once again a united front will be the projected outcome but there is not question that this will be a heated exchange because there are Liberal MLA's who have had enough under her leadership. Furthermore, four Liberal Party Association Presidents have resigned last week because of this recent scandal as well as what they see as a rising crescendo of memo leaks concerning systemic, endemic, internal disease within the Liberal organization. So, despite the united front that may be presented at the end of the day, there may be decay in the support level within the Party grassroots, and in the public perception which has yet to make up its mind how to vote. Many may not want to vote in another NDP government because memories linger, but this present Liberal alternative is undesirable.
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