Things are heating up in British Columbia politics with an election just around the corner.
The language in a leaked document put forward the idea to the Liberals to co-ordinate resources to focus on winning over ethnic voters. Heads have begun to roll with Premier Christy Clark’s now former chief of staff, Kim Haakdstad, already resigning over the scandal.
Even though Clark has apologized, there was a call for her to step down over what was said in the document.
If you want to talk about bad timing, this seems to be the perfect example in a political world. The Liberals have been behind in a number of polls released over the past few months, and one would have to think this is not going to make getting re-elected any easier.
Realistically, parties going after voters of all ethnic backgrounds is no great surprise. If you are going to run in an election the main goal is to try and figure out a way to get more people out to vote for you than the candidates you are facing.
The catch here seems to be that people see this as a terrible show of respect. Respect for the people you represent should be high on any politician’s mind. The voters may or may not agree with all of your decisions, but in the end we can’t always get what we want. But when respect seems to be lost, or missing in action, people tend to respond.
In this case the response has been to call, in some cases, for the resignation of the premier. The BC Liberals have had to go into a defensive mode and deal with the fact that they are in a very stormy sea moving forward. If we were not already in a major push going into the election, we must think that the Liberals and NDP will be rolling hard moving forward.
One side of this tale that is yet to be written, is whether or not, with all that has happened, the government will change. Most polls may have the NDP out front, but there is another number that stands out in many of them — the number of people who are still undecided. Even though things have been going poorly for the Liberals, a significant number of people polled seem to be available to be wooed into winning their vote. Elections can be tricky, and week to week things can change from going great to falling apart.
Before the last federal election I doubt many people would have seen the Orange Crush dropping the big wave over Quebec. But it happened, and if any lesson should be learned, it is that, even though you may be doing well in the polls, sitting back and waiting to see if your opponent makes enough mistakes to get your elected, is a dangerous game to play.
In the end, people will have the chance to get out and have their voices heard in May. Voter turnout for the last provincial election was barely over 50 per cent. It will be interesting if more people will bother to come out later this year.
