Skip to content

Political parties interfere with the democratic process

Former Boundary - Similkameen Conservative candidate Mischa Popoff felt the heavy hand of party politics last week

 

 

 

 

Former Boundary - Similkameen Conservative candidate Mischa Popoff felt the heavy hand of party politics last week when the B.C. Conservative party ousted him from the riding for comments made as a columnist regarding single mothers.

Popoff joins the ranks of Dayleen Van Ryswyk in Kelowna and Ian Tootil in Vancouver, both of whom were dumped by their respective parties for comments percieved to be controversial, unflattering, or otherwise.

It seems to us that in politics today, the political parties themselves are the first roadblocks to the democratic right to free speech in their attempt to impress upon the public a sterile, lily white image of their candidates.

 

As Popoff put it, “I’ve written hundreds of columns. It wasn’t difficult for the party to figure out what I was about.”

The British Columbia electorate should take the provinces political parties to task for attempting to create false images of their candidates by muzzling their free thoughts.

 

The electorate has a right to hear reasonable discussion on topics and issues from their candidates, even if that candidate may express a minority or controversial view - especially if a candidate has made it past the party’s vetting process. Muzzling what might be perceived as unhealthy comment for the party does nothing to help the electorate decide the viability of the candidate from their point of view. In a sense, they are taking away the voters right to choose, because a muzzled candidate is not truly representative of what he or she truly feels.

If political parties continue along this path of censorship, the colourful political personalites of the past will be a distant memory. Instead, our candidates will increasingly become good news lip syncers of party policy, the most successful of whom will have as little background and baggage as possible.

A candidates’  point of view should be known, open and real to the voting public. They - not politcial party strategists - are the only ones who have the right to decide if the candidate’s point of veiw has validity, and thay’ll do that with their ballot.