A week ago we had no candidates for the three major parties in the riding-that-time-forgot, Mississauga-Brampton South. By next Thursday night, we should have all of them in place.
The first puzzle piece dropped Saturday when Liberal candidate Amrit Mangat was unveiled at a Mississauga hotel as the appointed candidate of the party in power.
The 54-year-old Brampton resident said this morning that she is “very happy to be the candidate. The (Liberal) party followed the process and I am very pleased because there were several other very qualified people. I’m a woman. I reflect the diversity of the riding and I have experience because I have been a small business woman and a teacher.”
Born in India and trained as a teacher there, Mangat came to Canada in 1992. She has taught as a supply teacher, managed several small businesses and is now an office administrator with her lawyer-husband’s law firm, which moved its offices from Mississauga to Brampton 18 months ago.
Asked if being appointed rather than chosen in the open nomination that many other would-be candidates wanted, Mangat said, “in my opinion, that won’t be an issue. There were other candidates (who applied) and I followed the process. The leader has the legal power,” to appoint.
The party was clearly looking for a young female face to reflect the many shades of Mississauga-Brampton South. “One of its greatest strengths is its diversity,” says Mangat. “We need to celebrate so many different cultures. We are a model for the world. We are a beacon for the world and we need to move forward.”
Being appointed a little more than three weeks before the campaign is to be launched would normally be a distinct disadvantage, but maybe not in M-BS – as some smart-alecks have taken to calling it.
Masood Khan, who has been the front-runner all along for the Conservative nod had a meeting Sunday afternoon with Party Leader John Tory and is deeply disillusioned that the nomination he thought was well in hand will now be an open contest. The nomination is set for next Monday night at 7:30 p.m. at the Living Arts Centre, but Khan is considering withdrawing.
“I told John Tory and (Party President) Blair McCreadie all along that I don’t want to create a problem for the party and I would step aside the moment they felt they had somebody who was better,” said Khan.
A new candidate, Mortgage Broker Ramdyal Singh, has applied directly to the party and is the other contender for the post.
Khan doesn’t think the newcomer, whom he does not know, is better and believes he has more votes than Singh. He is considering withdrawing, however, because he feels he has already earned the post. “It’s a matter of principle,’” he says.
The 11-member riding executive apparently agreeds. They resigned Sunday evening, confirms local nomination committee Chair Charles Piper. They are apparently upset, as Khan is, because the local candidate their search committee found is being allowed to be challenged at such a late hour by someone they know almost nothing about.
Meanwhile, the NDP will nominate its candidate, Karanjit Pandher, August 30.
It appears that the Conservatives kept hoping a “star candidate” would run onto the stage to grab the nomination, but it hasn’t happened.
With Khan’s likely withdrawal, you will be hard-pressed to find any candidates with any significant local profile at all in M-BS.
Welcome to the City’s no-name riding. It’s starting to look like generic politics in its basest form.
Comments (1)
I am going to repeat myself here, and probably many more times between now and the October 10th Ontario election. After that, I hope not to, but probably will be saying a lot of, ‘I told you so’.
The type of mock candidate nomination/appointment (or whatever else you might want to call the sham process) that is going on in Mississauga-Brampton South is but a rehearsal for what will become the norm if Mixed Member Proportional Representation (MMP) is implemented in Ontario.
All the Political Parties are playing this stupid game and relying on the assumption that the general population is even stupider than they are and thus will fall for this experiment in democratic renewal.
Yea. Sure. If MMP is implemented in Ontario, all political parties will have more members based on the popular vote rather than just the old first-past-the-post method that has worked for centuries.
However, we the people, will still not know who those individuals are that we will be casting our ballots for until after ‘THEY’ have been appointed by THEIR Party’s Executive AFTER the election.
My version of what will happen with MMP I’m sure will be denied by all Political Parties; but the evidence based on current and past behaviours, so far indicates I am correct.
So I caution all voters not to place your bets on door #1, #2, #3 or any door that is closed and you are being coerced into walking through while blindfolded.
Posted by Stephen Wahl | August 22, 2007 12:14 PM
Posted on August 22, 2007 12:14