JOURNEY TO UNITY HAS FOLLOWED A CONTENTIOUS PATH
And now, troubles with the process are plaguing the conservative referendum
Progressive Conservative Leader Jason Kenney. Wildrose Leader Brian Jean.
Roll those titles around on your tongue like fine grassroots wine. By Monday, they will be out of stock.
If the conservative unity referendum passes Saturday, Kenney and Jean will no longer be leaders of anything.
Both parties will cease to exist as active political entities, although they will enter a kind of legal half-life as “legacy” parties within the new United Conservative Party.
Similarly, Kenney and Jean will be legacy leaders, as they embark on a new struggle to lead the UCP.
But there will be an “if” about all of this until about 6 p.m. Saturday, when the vote to amalgamate the parties is complete.
Referendum voting wasn’t going smoothly on Friday, as many people reported voting problems and issues surrounding the Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) required to cast a ballot.
At 4 p.m., the phone wait time for the Progressive Conservatives was 30 minutes. The procedure was as complicated as reporting a lost or stolen credit card, but not nearly as fast.
Calgary member of Parliament Michelle Rempel complained that she’d tried phoning, texting and emailing, but couldn’t get her PIN from Wildrose.
Wildrose acknowledged problems with hundreds of members. Some people got two PINs, some none at all. On the PC side, others received their PINs, but then couldn’t vote.
It’s the old problem with phone and computer voting that also plagued the PCs in their 2011 leadership contest.
These ID codes are distributed at the last minute to fend off hackers and fraudsters. Often, the only thing they discourage is voting.
The parties will stumble through this uproar to some kind of resolution by Saturday afternoon.
The more pressing worry is that Wildrose could still score less than 75 per cent support, which is the threshold for acceptance of party amalgamation.
In that case, nobody knows what the heck happens next. Little thought has been given to a “no” vote by either party.
Failure would bring a time of bumbling around in the dark, as conservatives try to salvage something that could win an election.
Acceptance of unity by both parties’ members is still widely expected. That would trigger a crescendo of unprecedented changes to Alberta’s political life.
After the deal is approved, the new UCP will immediately apply to Elections Alberta to be registered.
“The result will be that the UCP and the Legacy Parties will have one executive and one leader having control of all three of the registered parties,” says the preliminary merger agreement signed May 18.
You may wonder who that “one leader” will be?
He or she will be chosen by a secret ballot of Wildrose and PC members of the legislature, probably on Monday.
This will be lopsided because Wildrose has 22 MLAs and the PC only eight. You can bet the winner won’t be Ric McIver — again.
One twist is that Jean will be eligible to vote as an MLA, but Kenney won’t because he’s not elected.
A few Wildrose names have been thrown around, including house leader Nathan Cooper and Calgary MLA Prasad Panda. The inside betting is on Cooper. The winner will be barred from running for the permanent leadership.
If the legislature were in session right now, Speaker Bob Wanner would have a dilemma. Should he recognize the UCP as a united caucus, or continue to treat the MLAs as members of the legacy parties?
The issue may not come up until after the permanent UCP leader is chosen on Oct. 28. The fall session is set to open four days later, on Nov. 1.
After Saturday’s result, the next great struggle will be the UCP leadership race. Even before it starts, Kenney faces controversy over his failure to disclose many donors to his leadership political action committee, Unite Alberta.
Kenney’s PAC contributed to PC Party poverty by siphoning donations directly to his cause. Unite Alberta raised nearly $500,000 in one fiscal quarter, while the entire party itself collected only $400,000 in a whole year.
The NDP is now considering regulation of PACs that circumvent donation limits.
Kenney scorns this, but the leadership drive he won has shown how unregulated these bodies are. (Kenney wasn’t even required to report the donations for which he’s now being slammed.)
The path to this unity vote was contentious, even with leaders pursuing the same goal. Soon, they’ll be loose to fight each other.
Innocent bystanders should prepare to duck.