On May 16, 2001, 9,162 voters in the provincial riding of Vancouver – Kensington voted for Campbell Liberal Patrick Wong, and only 7,478 voted for sitting Premier Ujjal Dosanjh. The personal defeat was the least of his humiliation; Dosanjh led his party to almost total wipeout. Thanks to Jenny Kwan, Joy MacPhail, Carole James, and Jack Layton, at the federal level, the NDP is now a credible force. Dosanjh hasn’t given up and is about to face Dr. Victor Soo Chan, a dentist, who is the candidate for the new Conservative party. Some think Dosanjh doesn’t care if he loses because he really is out for a patronage appointment following the election.

In the 2000 federal election Herb Dhaliwal hung onto his seat by the skin of his teeth. If the Progressive Conservatives hadn’t split the vote, the Alliance may have won. Dhaliwal took 17,705 votes compared to the Alliance’s 15,384, but the Progressive Conservatives took 2,649. The NDP candidate won a mere 3,848 votes. The combined total of the Alliance and the PC was greater than the Liberal vote. Riding boundaries have been changed for the next election. In Vancouver South, the riding has shifted west and north while the Burnaby portion has been eliminated. The former western boundary of Cambie St has shifted to Granville, the northern boundary of 49th has shifted to 41st, and the eastern boundary is Boundary Road rather than a large portion of Burnaby. The shift probably helps the Conservatives and hurts the Liberals and the NDP.

Voters don’t like “turncoats”. By appointing Dosanjh as a candidate and bypassing the democratic nomination procedures, Premier Paul Martin is displaying hypocrisy with respect to his often repeated promise about democratizing Parliament. A reported 7,500 voters signed Liberal membership cards in order to participate in a hotly contested nomination fight following the overthrow of Herb Dhaliwal. David Basi, fired after the raid on the BC Legislature, was reported to have played a key role in kicking Dhaliwal out of his seat. Many disillusioned Liberals may turn on him in the election; they may believe that he could never have won an honest nomination contest.

I became media spokesperson for Dosanjh during his NDP leadership bid because Ujjal couldn’t talk to the media without creating problems. In 2000 I joined Dosanjh’s senior staff in the Premier’s office. He should have called an early election, but he was busy with personal matters such as moving out of his constituency and into a more befitting home on Southwest Marine Drive. Following a holiday to India in December 2000, he returned to receive reports that the NDP was on the verge of a total wipeout. I urged him to prepare for the election; he said that he was going to leave for China on a Team Canada Mission. I resigned in disgust. I believe that lobbying for an appointment to the senate may have been his priority, but right or wrong, subsequent events have shown that Dosanjh is focused on himself.

Even as a turncoat, no reasonable person would defend the scandal plagued Liberals. Dr. Victor Soo Chang is most likely to win in Vancouver South. It appears that Dosanjh is paying his dues in order to qualify for a fat Liberal patronage appointment. That is the kind of politics that has brought the Liberals into disrepute, and is the reason they don’t deserve another chance to govern Canada.