National Post.
May 11, 2001
Gareth Richmond is not waiting around for the crash. With less than a week
remaining until the British Columbia election, the 19-year-old New Democratic
candidate has decided to stop knocking on doors and attending candidate forums
in Vancouver-Quilchena. Instead, he's taking his socialist ideas where they're
appreciated: Cuba.
He left last Sunday on a tour of the Communist island state sponsored by the
Socialist caucus, a radical faction within the federal NDP, and is not expected
back until election eve. In an e-mail from Havana to campaign workers, Mr.
Richmond breathlessly explained how he had found himself "sitting five feet
away from Fidel" during the group's audience with the Cuban dictator.
Tour participants were promised they will "breathe the fresh air of a
worker's state" and "encounter the enthusiasm of a people in charge of
their own destiny" during their 10 days in the Caribbean's
Bulgaria-with-palm-trees. They will attend a feminist convention and lectures on
"efforts to construct a society free of capitalist control."
(Unfortunately, all this breathing, encountering and lecturing has left no time
to visit Cuba's political prisons, forced labour camps or state-sanctioned
teen-hooker stroll. Such are the limitations of organized tours.)
It is probably just as well Mr. Richmond is gone, for B.C. voters appear
intent on exacting revenge on the NDP government of Ujjal Dosanjh for a decade
of deceit and mismanagement. It appears possible that the provincial Liberals
will win all 79 seats in the provincial legislature. They lead the NDP by as
much as 50 percentage points in polls. Mr. Dosanjh has already conceded defeat
and is pleading piteously that voters permit his party to retain official
status, which requires four seats.
A 79-to-0 rout would be unhealthy for the province's democracy, but it would
be what the NDP deserves after its fudge-it budgets and fast ferry, bingo and
casino scandals. Still, the NDP presumably wants B.C. voters to enjoy the same
political freedoms as Cubans, and would therefore encourage them to take "charge
of their own destiny" and breathe the fresh air of capitalism after a
decade of stagnant socialism.
Copyright © 2001 National Post Online | 