So much for that "fresh face" stuff.
Knives come out swiftly for Dion
MICHAEL VALPY AND JANE TABER
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
October 15, 2008 at 12:11 AM EDT
TORONTO, OTTAWA — Stéphane Dion will face pressure to declare within days that he will end his troubled leadership of the federal Liberal Party and let the machinery start rolling to replace him, senior party members said yesterday.
With the Liberals' election-day vote blown away like fall leaves, the overwhelming majority of members of the party's parliamentary caucus made clear that Mr. Dion, unlike former leader John Turner, will not get a second chance to lead the Liberals in a campaign, one well-placed party member said.
A torrent of harsh pronouncements rained down on him yesterday, illustrating that politics takes no prisoners. An Atlantic MP said flatly: “We gotta change the sheets.” An Ontario MP referred to Mr. Dion dismissively as the “leader of Toronto” – because that was the party's only bastion of strength after the votes were counted in what used to be a Liberal-red province. The MP said Mr. Dion should quit immediately.
British Columbia's Liberal Premier, Gordon Campbell, said voters in his province clearly were not impressed by Mr. Dion. “We can't underestimate the fact that, frankly, Mr. Dion's leadership did not resonate with British Columbians. [Stephen] Harper's did.”
One well-connected party member suggested wryly that if Mr. Dion, noted for his stubbornness and a tendency not to take counsel from within his party, didn't announce quickly that he is stepping down, the party should move the furniture out of his office.
“How do you do a putsch on a guy who doesn't understand he's being putsched?” he asked. Another influential Liberal, noting this week's early snowfall in Saskatchewan, said Mr. Dion should go there immediately and take a long walk – a reference to Pierre Trudeau's memorable statement that he made his decision to resign as prime minister after going for a long walk in the snow.
Senator David Smith, co-chair of the Liberals' election campaign and the only ranking party member who would speak for attribution, said, “I feel badly about the result.
“I just think everybody wants to be supportive of him through this period because he put up a great fight and everybody has to show respect to him. Obviously, he will be making some decisions. But everybody should just be very respectful and appreciative of what he did. I don't think anybody should rush into anything.”
The Liberals' share of the vote was 26 per cent, down four percentage points from the 2006 election and the worst showing in the party's history. They won 22 fewer seats than they held at dissolution of the last Parliament, making them the only party to show a decline both in popular vote and representation.
Alone among the party leaders, Mr. Dion, an aloof former academic, made no public statement yesterday. The party's constitution calls for a leadership review, which is scheduled for next May in Vancouver. However, the mood within the party decidedly was not to wait, but to load Mr. Dion immediately onto a tumbrel and have him carted away, replaced by an interim leader, and to transform the leadership review into a full-fledged leadership convention.
The party is in debt. It can't afford both a leadership review and a leadership convention. Liberals close to the major contenders in the 2006 leadership convention that elected Mr. Dion vowed there would be discipline in the party, and no unseemly attempts to push Mr. Dion out the door. Most speculation is that the leader's mantle will be draped on either Michael Ignatieff or Bob Rae, both Toronto MPs who placed second and third respectively to Mr. Dion in 2006.
Other names being talked about are former deputy prime minister John Manley, former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna, former Ontario cabinet minister Gerard Kennedy (who won election as a Toronto MP on Tuesday) and Toronto MP Martha Hall Findlay, a contender in 2006. Suburban Toronto MP Ruby Dhalla and New Brunswick MP Dominic Leblanc have indicated their interest in entering the race.
John Turner succeeded Mr. Trudeau as Liberal leader and became prime minister for 21/2 months until he lost the election in 1984 to Conservative Brian Mulroney.
Mr. Turner called on his loyal network of supporters within the party to avoid being ousted. He also had substantial sympathy for the case his backers made that Mr. Trudeau had left him a weak hand to play.
For Mr. Dion, there is no sympathy, senior party members said in interviews yesterday. They pointed out he had two years to prepare for an election; he wrote the platform himself and also decided on how the campaign should be run.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081015.election-dion16/BNStory/politics/home
