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Ruby Dhalla has been disqualified from the Liberal leadership race. We are not being shown the details, but this looks illegitimate. Only $22k is questioned; a trifling amount in the scheme of things. According to Dhalla, this is just a case of six couples who shared credit cards, so that both husband and wife made contributions—legitimately. According to the party brass, there is something about a foreign national being involved. It might be hard for a campaign to screen for such things.
It smells bad to me that the party declared ten “very serious” breaches of campaign rules. That sounds like the lady protesting too much, without details.
It is also suspicious that this disqualification came three days before the scheduled leadership debate. It looks like the backroom feared having Mark Carney face Dhalla before the cameras.
She was not likely to overtake Carney, but she was likely to tarnish his image, and embarrass him and the party establishment with her level of support.
It seems obvious that Carney has been chosen by the invisible power brokers, and the public vote is just for show.
Indeed, Carney must be much weaker than we have so far seen, for the party to take this step. It looks like a public relations disaster. As Dhalla has been quick to point out, they are excluding a minority woman. Worse, it is the second candidate of South Asian background that they have disqualified. And this after scandals involving other minority women being supposedly mistreated: Jody Wilson Raybould, Celina Caesar-Chavannes. And the party is risking alienating and infuriating Dhalla supporters; she is charismatic and has been getting a lot of interest. Hearts will be broken.
They must have been desperate to take this risk. They must have felt the public relations disaster would be worse were Dhalla allowed to debate Carney, and her support were revealed. Even if the Dhalla campaign had genuinely been cheating at this level, it would have been wiser otherwise to overlook it.
Should we be surprised or alarmed? The Conservative race that selected Erin O’Toole was also a sham, intended ironically to coronate Peter MacKay, with O’Toole running as controlled “True Blue” opposition. Jim Karahalios was disqualified, despite showing much early support. MacKay was given privileged access to party information. A series of strong candidates all dropped out within a week or two of one another: Pierre Poilievre, Jean Charest, Rhona Ambrose. The word was out and the fix was in.
It went awry when O’Toole ended up winning; but not too far awry. He was a good soldier, and implemented the establishment platform, in defiance of his own voting base.
The last three Democratic Party presidential races were also obviously manipulated, to force the nominations of Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris respectively. With deals cut, caucus counts cooked, sudden withdrawals, and Bernie Sanders being in the end obedient controlled opposition.
This is all undemocratic; but nothing new. Candidates always used to be chosen primarily in the backrooms, with a few primaries in the US system, and nobody really thought there should be a general vote. In the Canadian parliamentary system, party leaders were chosen by vote of the caucus in the House, not the general party membership. Democracy came later. If you did not like the candidate offered, you voted for the other party.
The problem comes, of course, if there are only two viable parties, and both parties are controlled by the same small cabal. As seems generally to be the case.
In the US, the idea of opening it all up to a general vote came mostly after the campaign of 1968, when Humphrey was chosen by the Democrats without running in any primaries. There was violence in the streets, and of course the Democrats lost the subsequent election. So the Democrats overhauled and democratized their process, and other parties in other countries have followed suit.
The party establishments have been challenged often by insurgent candidates since. This tends to mess things up from the point of view of the career politicians. They have a brand to protect. In Dhalla’s case, she did not speak French; this could hurt their historic Quebec base. With her more centrist views, she might attract many new members to the party who would, in the end, not vote Liberal anyway. Conversely, they fear a radical candidate like Sanders, or McGovern in 1972, could attract majority support within the party, but alienate the majority of voters in a general election.
So of course the politicos have rigged the process.
Trump slipped through the net. In Britain, Jeremy Corbin slipped through the net. Liz Truss slipped through the net, but they responded quickly.
And candidates really can cheat, and then the party must have recourse and referees. Patrick Brown took the Ontario Conservative leadership under suspicious circumstances, without real popular support, and looked as though he has using the same tactics in the 2022 federal leadership race. There has been foreign interference in nomination meetings.
I cannot therefore get too upset over Ruby Dhalla being disqualified. Perhaps it would be best just to keep it honest by having the caucus choose the leader, as originally envisioned. Or, in the US, having each state send unpledged delegates to brokered conventions. All systems are imperfect; politics is always about making the best of it.
