The Written Word
for September 26, 1999

I wonder if Joy McPhail is playing ‘possum with the NDP leadership convention. Perhaps she’s just letting her two main rivals, Ujjal Dosanjh and Gordon Wilson fight off self inflicted onslaughts.

Mr Dosanjh has two inconsistent things going against him ... part of the party is angry at him because he blew the whistle on Glen Clark and another part is mad because he didn’t do it soon enough. There is no fair argumenet supporting the first proposition. Even accepting Mr Dosanjh’s views of what happened there was a four day hiatus between the time Donsanjh was given full details of the investigation into Clark’s conduct and Clark’s resignation. He certainly did not act too quickly! The more serious charge is that Dosanjh ought to have confronted Mr Clark on March 3^rd when he first learned of the fact that Clark was under criminal investigation. Those many foot-soldiers who hold that view don’t do so for any lofty purpose of principle but because an earlier confrontation would have got Clark out of there sooner leaving the NDP all the more time to clean their act up.

Gordon Wilson’s self inflicted wounds come from the publication of his book in 1996 called A Civilized Revolution where he says some very unsocialistic things. He can’t complain that this is dredging up a long forgotten past because the book is only three years old. Moreover, on my program a few weeks ago, he reminded folks of the book and urged them to read it as his thinking on matters political. Wilson is also caught in a couple of falsehoods – such as he witnessed Dr Martin Luther King’s famous "I Have a Dream" speech of August 18, 1963 given at a time when little Gordon was a schoolboy in Kenya. Is he perhaps like the clock that strikes 13? You can never rely on it again?

In the meantime Joy has been very silent. She evidently knows the value of patience in all things but especially in politics. There is no hurry – there is the quest for delegates and she has lots of time for that. Her people are, presumably, beating the bushes for new members.

It is always hard to read a NDP convention because of the weighted labour vote. Moreover, we haven’t had the constituency meetings where organizations hear from all candidates and select delegates. Even Fter committed delegates are chosen, it’s hard to predict because it is a secret ballot. Plus – and this is crucial – delegates are only committed, or feel themselves committed for the first ballot. In order to predict one must know the second choices of delegates and that’s impossible to track.

In all events, Joy McPhail goes to the convention with strong, though not unanimous labor support and the fact that while she must bear her share of the responsibility for this governments manifold sins and wickedness, by refraining from drawing her gun she has also failed to shoot herself in the foot.

Don’t count her out! Not by a long shot!