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The B.C. Election, May 14, 2013. A National Tragedy
Written by Robin Mathews
Begin at the beginning. The power figures at the centre of the B.C. New Democratic Party and the major, experienced MLAs in the legislature sold out the people of British Columbia, and Canada. That is the beginning and the end of the election story.
Other commentary may provide interesting footnotes. For instance: that the polls did it. The Green Party did it. The outside strategists did it. The propaganda, financing and organization of the neo-liberal campaign did it. Dix’s pipeline flip-flop in mid campaign did it. The big corporations did it. Christy Clark’s avid campaigning did it. Her endless willingness to lie did it. The Mainstream Press and Media’s flat-out campaigning for the Liberals did it. The morally obese voters who wouldn’t go out and vote did it. No.
The New Democratic Party leadership and powerful backroom dealers sold out the people of British Columbia and Canada, betraying (1) the principles of declared NDP political philosophy (2) the fundamentals of political opposition (3) and simple human decency. They turned their backs on British Columbians in order to collaborate with neo-liberalism, even criminal neo-liberalism.
Two distinguished women I am acquainted with, involved in public matters, were, earlier, approached to be NDP candidates. Both said they would have had to agree to have no independent ideas and to express no matter publicly that was not approved by the backroom dealers. As one put it - not until she had undergone a complete prefrontal lobotomy would she be considered an acceptable NDP candidate. The two women graciously declined to be stuffed replicas of Moe Sihota, of Carol James, of Jim Sinclair – president of the B.C. Federation of Labour. That policy of ‘cookie-cutter candidates’ says much about the almost total failure of the NDP to grapple with the most important issues in British Columbia in the last 12 years.
Almost all the top and most important actors in the B.C. NDP have been (literally or figuratively) collaborating with the Campbellclark Liberals - even before the NDP lost power. Ujjal Dosangh was rumoured to be negotiating to enter the Liberal Party even as he was the leader of the B.C. NDP. A perfect symbol ….
After the vicious, manufactured attacks on the Glen Clark NDP conducted by the RCMP, the Courts, the Media, and the Campbellclark forces, Joy MacPhail and Jenny Kwan did heroic and outstanding work as a matchless team in Opposition.
But the NDP intelligentsia and its core powerful didn’t launch a major, organized, sustained attack to expose the dirty, lawless actions of the RCMP, the Courts, the Media, and the Campbellclark Right against the Glen Clark NDP – and to assure that fraudulent behavior became history. The NDP core powerful and intelligentsia – and many British Columbians - accepted the Reactionary smear as history. As if it is something to have to apologize for.
Seven years passed in which B.C. was looted and shredded and divided up by means that were often (I insist) criminal. The NDP spoke principally of wanting orderly and polite behavior in the Victoria parliament, refusing to go after the criminal Campbellclark behaviour. But the NDP did much, much worse things ... even after they changed leaders. They collaborated.
We are asked these days to think that maybe the wrong leader was chosen after Carol James, that maybe John Horgan – critic on Energy, Mines, and Petroleum Resources - should have been made leader. A nice guy, a straight shooter, an answerer of the public’s questions … we are told.
Think Water Energy. Think BC Hydro. Think a BC people’s gigantic enterprise guaranteeing reasonably priced power to the population and industry for the foreseeable future … absolutely guaranteed. Think a profit-maker anchoring other development in the province and contributing funds annually to general revenues for health, education, etcetera.
Think of it wrecked by design, its potential handed to cronies, its profitability destroyed, its structure chopped into shreds, its operation secretly divided - its debt disguised, faked, dissimulated, manufactured by the Campbellclark forces. Think that in the May Election John Horgan said almost nothing about those facts – nor did anyone else in the NDP.
“Oh,” you say. “But who knew of those things? ”Everyone paying attention. Besides, the Auditor General of B.C. knew of those things, reported them formally, and went so far as to say the Auditor General’s Office has not been able to approve the insane accounting done in BC Hydro FOR TEN YEARS!
The B.C. election could have been won by a determined exposure of the destruction of B.C. Hydro, its looting by the Campbellclark forces, its re-creation as a crippled, monstrous, debt-ridden political instrument in the hands of Campbell and Clark. In the election campaign the NDP almost completely avoided the subject, and so did John Horgan. If that isn’t collaboration with the Campbellclark forces, tell me what is.
The other enterprise owned by the people of British Columbia, a profit-maker for general revenues, a golden infrastructure asset for provincial development, and a facilitator of reasonable transportation for the people was BC Rail.
In brief – I insist BC Rail was purposefully crippled, fraudulently prevented from making profit – and destroyed in an organized way as a top level Campbellclark policy. I believe a huge, concerted, criminal action was undertaken to rob BC Rail from the people of B.C. and to transfer it to the CNR .
The statement by the RCMP at the close of the famous search warrant “raids” on legislative offices in December 28 of 2003 that no elected person was under investigation was – to me – a statement of RCMP collusion in the corrupt transfer of BC Rail to CNR. How could the RCMP, without full investigation, declare and hold to the claim that no elected official was involved in what was, visibly, a major, top-level, highly organized fraud, destruction and preparation for transfer of the railway? They couldn’t.
In 2003, a Special Prosecutor was appointed to work with RCMP to shape investigations, to formulate charges, and to conduct trials that might arise out of the BC Rail Scandal. The legislation governing such appointments is rigid. The person must not have or ever have had connection with politicians, civil servants, police figures, etcetera that might suggest a possibility of bias. So strict is the legislation that the appointment must not even allow for the perception (by observers) of possible conflict of interest. Simple. Clear.
The appointee William Berardino– who conducted the trial against Dave Basi, Bobby Virk, and Aneal Basi - had been partner and colleague of the appointing Attorney General for seven years; and he had been partner and colleague of the appointing Deputy Attorney General for eleven years!! Recently.
His illegitimacy for appointment was unquestionable. As a result – British Columbians need to be told again and again THIS FACT: no moment of the expensive four-year pre-trial and trial of the three accused men was legitimate.
What has this to do with the May 2013 election? The NDP knew of the illegitimate appointment. The Chief Justice and the Associate Chief Justice of the B.C Supreme Court supported the illegitimate appointment, as did the judge on the case, Madam Justice Anne MacKenzie, by refusing to act to correct the violation. That information was fully available to the NDP.
Gary Bass, B.C.’s top Mountie refused a formal request to investigate Gordon Campbell and his associates in the corrupt transfer of BC Rail to the CNR. The chief RCMP investigator on the BC Rail Scandal file was the brother-in-law of Kelly Reichert, Liberal Party Executive Director, who was in frequent contact with Gordon Campbell, premier. The NDP knew all that.
Sitting in the Supreme Court gallery fairly often were the NDP critic of the Attorney General and the NDP critic of the Solicitor General (who is in charge of the RCMP in B.C.). Neither lifted a finger to question formally the major illegitimacies I have listed or to call for the removal of the illegitimate Special Prosecutor.
The trial against Basi, Virk, and Basi could have been stopped, de-railed, blown sky high if the NDP had insisted that the trial could not continue with a tainted Special Prosecutor. The NDP could have dropped the Gordon Campbell government by aggressively refusing to accept the trial as legitimate – being conducted by an illegitimate Special Prosecutor – appointed by a Campbellclark Attorney General’s office.
Not only did the NDP not do that – but they collaborated actively. How? Things were getting so hot for the Campbell forces that in July of 2010, Michael de Jong, then Attorney General, decided to have Stephen Owen (a vice-president at UBC) do a review of the Special Prosecutor process in order, I believe, to take the heat off. He wanted, I believe, a “smelling-like-roses” report.
Two people who were interviewed and helped provide the “information” that let Stephen Owen fantasize and produce a “smelling like roses” report were Leonard Krog, NDP critic of the Attorney General and Mike Farnworth, NDP critic of the Solicitor General. I cannot think of another name for their participation in that whitewash than ‘collaboration’. It is a black mark, a disgrace, and a betrayal of the people of British Columbia.
At the end of the BC Rail Scandal trial - which I devoutly believe involved a corrupt RCMP, corrupt elements of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, and a corrupt Special Prosecutor appointment – to say nothing of a shamelessly perverse Mainstream Press and Media – a final sleaze act occurred.
To protect high-level bad actors coming under intense cross-examination, the Gordon Campbell government, I am sure, turned on the heat, made deals with the accused, paid (in a highly dubious and perhaps unlawful fashion) the $6 million costs of the three accused men … and shut down the trial. Were they, in fact, bribed?
Who paid the money? Who permitted it? It was plainly a dirty deal to save the skins of powerful politicians and corporate actors. The Auditor General wanted to know where the money came from – taxpayers’ money. Christy Clark and Shirley Bond (now Premier and Attorney General) did everything they could to prevent the Auditor General from knowing. The Auditor General took them to court to get information they were denying him.
The NDP could have won the election solely on a full-scale review of the wrongs in the BC Rail Scandal, the gigantic waste of money, the planning to defraud British Columbians, the lies, the cover-ups, the theft of assets, the dirty RCMP, the dirty Supreme Court, the actions of Christy Clark and Shirley Bond to hide the truth of the $6 million.
Not Leonard Krog, not Mike Farnworth, not one of the candidates for the NDP did ANYTHING of significance on the subject in the election campaign. And when he was face to face with her in the Leaders’ Debate, Adrien Dix didn’t ask Christy Clark why she used her high office to prevent the Auditor General from gaining information B.C.’ers have a right to – and which may have led to charges against top government officers, even perhaps against Clark herself.
I can think of no other reason for the abandonment by the NDP of their primary duty to British Columbians than that they were collaborating with the Campbellclark forces ... for whatever insane reasons. (And I have only cited two examples … among many. British Columbians don’t know what they should about B.C. Ferries corruption, Sea to Sky Highway corruption, run-of-the-rivers corruption, Public Private Partnership corruption, etc. etc. etc. Why? Because of NDP “collaboration”.)
The top actors in the B.C. NDP shaped a campaign that was a betrayal of British Columbians, refusing to address the most important crimes of the Campbellclark forces against the province and the people of the province.
The outcome of the May 14 B.C. election is a national tragedy.
The NDP top officers and senior MLA’s carry the whole responsibility for the tragedy and must answer for their betrayal. What is to be done? Suggestions are already being made. I will add to them in the next column.
Written by Robin Mathews
_______________
Ah fuck it...I need a dirty woman......Grant G
The Straight Goods
Cheers Eyes Wide Open
The B.C. Election, May 14, 2013. A National Tragedy
Written by Robin Mathews
Begin at the beginning. The power figures at the centre of the B.C. New Democratic Party and the major, experienced MLAs in the legislature sold out the people of British Columbia, and Canada. That is the beginning and the end of the election story.
Other commentary may provide interesting footnotes. For instance: that the polls did it. The Green Party did it. The outside strategists did it. The propaganda, financing and organization of the neo-liberal campaign did it. Dix’s pipeline flip-flop in mid campaign did it. The big corporations did it. Christy Clark’s avid campaigning did it. Her endless willingness to lie did it. The Mainstream Press and Media’s flat-out campaigning for the Liberals did it. The morally obese voters who wouldn’t go out and vote did it. No.
The New Democratic Party leadership and powerful backroom dealers sold out the people of British Columbia and Canada, betraying (1) the principles of declared NDP political philosophy (2) the fundamentals of political opposition (3) and simple human decency. They turned their backs on British Columbians in order to collaborate with neo-liberalism, even criminal neo-liberalism.
Two distinguished women I am acquainted with, involved in public matters, were, earlier, approached to be NDP candidates. Both said they would have had to agree to have no independent ideas and to express no matter publicly that was not approved by the backroom dealers. As one put it - not until she had undergone a complete prefrontal lobotomy would she be considered an acceptable NDP candidate. The two women graciously declined to be stuffed replicas of Moe Sihota, of Carol James, of Jim Sinclair – president of the B.C. Federation of Labour. That policy of ‘cookie-cutter candidates’ says much about the almost total failure of the NDP to grapple with the most important issues in British Columbia in the last 12 years.
Almost all the top and most important actors in the B.C. NDP have been (literally or figuratively) collaborating with the Campbellclark Liberals - even before the NDP lost power. Ujjal Dosangh was rumoured to be negotiating to enter the Liberal Party even as he was the leader of the B.C. NDP. A perfect symbol ….
After the vicious, manufactured attacks on the Glen Clark NDP conducted by the RCMP, the Courts, the Media, and the Campbellclark forces, Joy MacPhail and Jenny Kwan did heroic and outstanding work as a matchless team in Opposition.
But the NDP intelligentsia and its core powerful didn’t launch a major, organized, sustained attack to expose the dirty, lawless actions of the RCMP, the Courts, the Media, and the Campbellclark Right against the Glen Clark NDP – and to assure that fraudulent behavior became history. The NDP core powerful and intelligentsia – and many British Columbians - accepted the Reactionary smear as history. As if it is something to have to apologize for.
Seven years passed in which B.C. was looted and shredded and divided up by means that were often (I insist) criminal. The NDP spoke principally of wanting orderly and polite behavior in the Victoria parliament, refusing to go after the criminal Campbellclark behaviour. But the NDP did much, much worse things ... even after they changed leaders. They collaborated.
We are asked these days to think that maybe the wrong leader was chosen after Carol James, that maybe John Horgan – critic on Energy, Mines, and Petroleum Resources - should have been made leader. A nice guy, a straight shooter, an answerer of the public’s questions … we are told.
Think Water Energy. Think BC Hydro. Think a BC people’s gigantic enterprise guaranteeing reasonably priced power to the population and industry for the foreseeable future … absolutely guaranteed. Think a profit-maker anchoring other development in the province and contributing funds annually to general revenues for health, education, etcetera.
Think of it wrecked by design, its potential handed to cronies, its profitability destroyed, its structure chopped into shreds, its operation secretly divided - its debt disguised, faked, dissimulated, manufactured by the Campbellclark forces. Think that in the May Election John Horgan said almost nothing about those facts – nor did anyone else in the NDP.
“Oh,” you say. “But who knew of those things? ”Everyone paying attention. Besides, the Auditor General of B.C. knew of those things, reported them formally, and went so far as to say the Auditor General’s Office has not been able to approve the insane accounting done in BC Hydro FOR TEN YEARS!
The B.C. election could have been won by a determined exposure of the destruction of B.C. Hydro, its looting by the Campbellclark forces, its re-creation as a crippled, monstrous, debt-ridden political instrument in the hands of Campbell and Clark. In the election campaign the NDP almost completely avoided the subject, and so did John Horgan. If that isn’t collaboration with the Campbellclark forces, tell me what is.
The other enterprise owned by the people of British Columbia, a profit-maker for general revenues, a golden infrastructure asset for provincial development, and a facilitator of reasonable transportation for the people was BC Rail.
In brief – I insist BC Rail was purposefully crippled, fraudulently prevented from making profit – and destroyed in an organized way as a top level Campbellclark policy. I believe a huge, concerted, criminal action was undertaken to rob BC Rail from the people of B.C. and to transfer it to the CNR .
The statement by the RCMP at the close of the famous search warrant “raids” on legislative offices in December 28 of 2003 that no elected person was under investigation was – to me – a statement of RCMP collusion in the corrupt transfer of BC Rail to CNR. How could the RCMP, without full investigation, declare and hold to the claim that no elected official was involved in what was, visibly, a major, top-level, highly organized fraud, destruction and preparation for transfer of the railway? They couldn’t.
In 2003, a Special Prosecutor was appointed to work with RCMP to shape investigations, to formulate charges, and to conduct trials that might arise out of the BC Rail Scandal. The legislation governing such appointments is rigid. The person must not have or ever have had connection with politicians, civil servants, police figures, etcetera that might suggest a possibility of bias. So strict is the legislation that the appointment must not even allow for the perception (by observers) of possible conflict of interest. Simple. Clear.
The appointee William Berardino– who conducted the trial against Dave Basi, Bobby Virk, and Aneal Basi - had been partner and colleague of the appointing Attorney General for seven years; and he had been partner and colleague of the appointing Deputy Attorney General for eleven years!! Recently.
His illegitimacy for appointment was unquestionable. As a result – British Columbians need to be told again and again THIS FACT: no moment of the expensive four-year pre-trial and trial of the three accused men was legitimate.
What has this to do with the May 2013 election? The NDP knew of the illegitimate appointment. The Chief Justice and the Associate Chief Justice of the B.C Supreme Court supported the illegitimate appointment, as did the judge on the case, Madam Justice Anne MacKenzie, by refusing to act to correct the violation. That information was fully available to the NDP.
Gary Bass, B.C.’s top Mountie refused a formal request to investigate Gordon Campbell and his associates in the corrupt transfer of BC Rail to the CNR. The chief RCMP investigator on the BC Rail Scandal file was the brother-in-law of Kelly Reichert, Liberal Party Executive Director, who was in frequent contact with Gordon Campbell, premier. The NDP knew all that.
Sitting in the Supreme Court gallery fairly often were the NDP critic of the Attorney General and the NDP critic of the Solicitor General (who is in charge of the RCMP in B.C.). Neither lifted a finger to question formally the major illegitimacies I have listed or to call for the removal of the illegitimate Special Prosecutor.
The trial against Basi, Virk, and Basi could have been stopped, de-railed, blown sky high if the NDP had insisted that the trial could not continue with a tainted Special Prosecutor. The NDP could have dropped the Gordon Campbell government by aggressively refusing to accept the trial as legitimate – being conducted by an illegitimate Special Prosecutor – appointed by a Campbellclark Attorney General’s office.
Not only did the NDP not do that – but they collaborated actively. How? Things were getting so hot for the Campbell forces that in July of 2010, Michael de Jong, then Attorney General, decided to have Stephen Owen (a vice-president at UBC) do a review of the Special Prosecutor process in order, I believe, to take the heat off. He wanted, I believe, a “smelling-like-roses” report.
Two people who were interviewed and helped provide the “information” that let Stephen Owen fantasize and produce a “smelling like roses” report were Leonard Krog, NDP critic of the Attorney General and Mike Farnworth, NDP critic of the Solicitor General. I cannot think of another name for their participation in that whitewash than ‘collaboration’. It is a black mark, a disgrace, and a betrayal of the people of British Columbia.
At the end of the BC Rail Scandal trial - which I devoutly believe involved a corrupt RCMP, corrupt elements of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, and a corrupt Special Prosecutor appointment – to say nothing of a shamelessly perverse Mainstream Press and Media – a final sleaze act occurred.
To protect high-level bad actors coming under intense cross-examination, the Gordon Campbell government, I am sure, turned on the heat, made deals with the accused, paid (in a highly dubious and perhaps unlawful fashion) the $6 million costs of the three accused men … and shut down the trial. Were they, in fact, bribed?
Who paid the money? Who permitted it? It was plainly a dirty deal to save the skins of powerful politicians and corporate actors. The Auditor General wanted to know where the money came from – taxpayers’ money. Christy Clark and Shirley Bond (now Premier and Attorney General) did everything they could to prevent the Auditor General from knowing. The Auditor General took them to court to get information they were denying him.
The NDP could have won the election solely on a full-scale review of the wrongs in the BC Rail Scandal, the gigantic waste of money, the planning to defraud British Columbians, the lies, the cover-ups, the theft of assets, the dirty RCMP, the dirty Supreme Court, the actions of Christy Clark and Shirley Bond to hide the truth of the $6 million.
Not Leonard Krog, not Mike Farnworth, not one of the candidates for the NDP did ANYTHING of significance on the subject in the election campaign. And when he was face to face with her in the Leaders’ Debate, Adrien Dix didn’t ask Christy Clark why she used her high office to prevent the Auditor General from gaining information B.C.’ers have a right to – and which may have led to charges against top government officers, even perhaps against Clark herself.
I can think of no other reason for the abandonment by the NDP of their primary duty to British Columbians than that they were collaborating with the Campbellclark forces ... for whatever insane reasons. (And I have only cited two examples … among many. British Columbians don’t know what they should about B.C. Ferries corruption, Sea to Sky Highway corruption, run-of-the-rivers corruption, Public Private Partnership corruption, etc. etc. etc. Why? Because of NDP “collaboration”.)
The top actors in the B.C. NDP shaped a campaign that was a betrayal of British Columbians, refusing to address the most important crimes of the Campbellclark forces against the province and the people of the province.
The outcome of the May 14 B.C. election is a national tragedy.
The NDP top officers and senior MLA’s carry the whole responsibility for the tragedy and must answer for their betrayal. What is to be done? Suggestions are already being made. I will add to them in the next column.
Written by Robin Mathews
_______________
Ah fuck it...I need a dirty woman......Grant G
The Straight Goods
Cheers Eyes Wide Open
7 comments:
So, does that means there is no longer any honor in BC politics, leaving absolutely no one to vote for?
Myself, I have always felt you need to change the voting people not the political party.
...and a very bad acting job. Thanks for saying it so well.
Jean
Honour in politics? The suggestion is laughable; politicians of all stripes will do anything, say anything to gain an edge.
This article is highly accurate; I wouldn’t trust any one of them, ever.
The entire NDP brass needs to be dismissed all the way down to Sinclair and perhaps even beyond.
Clearly demonstrating that this is their little club and no one is going to join unless they permit that.
Think about this; you field your team at the start of the tilt with a 20 point spread in your favour and lose the match.
So twenty to nothing and you lose. General Manager, coach, all fired on the spot. Clean out your locker tomorrow.
But this is not the reality for the Jamesite crowd. They close ranks, install Dix, and the result is failure.
Still no change at the top because they cannot admit or make themselves accountable. Not even an offer to resign.
There is something sickeningly obvious about this last election, soo obvious that i can't see it. All that is clear is something about puppets and their masters. All those puppets have the same masters!
yup
You people make me laugh. Quote:
"Begin at the beginning. The power figures at the centre of the B.C. New Democratic Party and the major, experienced MLAs in the legislature sold out the people of British Columbia, and Canada. That is the beginning and the end of the election story."
Really? Considering that two of the last four American elections AND the last Canadian federal election were probably won by illegal means, and considering that the bc government and probably elections bc are the most corrupt government in Canada, why does nobody put two and two together?
The crooks on the right must be laughing their asses off.
IMHO, Honor in politics and politicians in the country of Canada and its provinces are a National Tragedy. Corruption and every man/women for themselves, while the common people of this country struggle with everyday life. I cannot believe that Dix is staying on, almost like he thinks he is Entitled. I am sick to think that our Country and Province have stooped to such depths; that liars and cheaters win out over the good guys/gals. Somehow and someway the decent people will have to continue to fight the fight to make these immoral misfits realize THEY WORK FOR WE, THE PEOPLE. Unfortunately, I do not, as so many others, have the answer of how to do that. I know in my heart one day it will happen, for if it doesn't the common, honest people are doomed to a life of nothingness.
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