Ernie Eves, the former Premier that confused Magna International with the legislator of Ontario, made some snarling comments about Norm Sterling being replaced by Jack MacLaren as PC candidate in that riding.
In case you aren’t familiar with the story: Mr. MacLaren and his friends felt that Mr. Sterling wasn’t representing their views. So they organized themselves and challenged Mr. Sterling in an election to choose the PC candidate. Due to the superior organizational abilities of Mr. MacLaren, and despite the interference of the outgoing association executive, he won.
This is how Mr. Eves characterized it:
“I don’t care who hears this,” Eves said at a recent tribute dinner for Sterling at a golf club outside Carleton Place. “The treatment that Norm got from his own party was not very polite, was not fair, it was not loyal, it was not compassionate, it was not even and it was not honest.”
Yes the horror and unfairness of a democratic vote. Clearly Mr. MacLaren didn’t understand that the point of internal party democracy is just to make people think that political parties are democratic institutions. You aren’t actually supposed to vote for someone that represents your views and aspirations. That would not be fair or compassionate!
I also think that the Tea Party comparison is hilarious. The Landowners Association is only superficially similar to the Tea Party activists. Unlike the Tea Party, the Landowners is a single advocacy group with a pretty clear political agenda. I’m not totally sure what the political agenda of the Tea Party is except “we are mad and we want you to do something about it.”
Really the thing that they most have in common is that they share a political strategy of being active within a political party; both organize and vote in internal party elections. That is to say, they both make use of grassroots democratic tools to make their opinions heard. Again it seems that Mr. Eves’ fundamental problem is that he doesn’t like democracy.
To PC leader Tim Hudak’s credit, his response was pretty good:
“It’s difficult to go through, no doubt about it,” he said. “But it’s democracy, and democracy can sometimes be messy.”
By messy I assume he means that you don’t always get the response that you want. By messy I think he means that sometimes you lose. Mr. MacLaren claimed that Mr. Sterling had become complacent, doesn’t the attitude that you shouldn’t be allowed to lose prove that?
I for one applaud the PC Party of Ontario for having the maturity and the sense to allow true democracy within its ranks.