For instance, via Not An Official Green Party Canada Site: Some depressing Green Party Canada News…
Oh no! John Fryer just quit as Elizabeth May`s campaign manager in SGI. I won`t bother going into the endless list of people who have been briefly associated on a professional basis with Elizabeth May and the current leadership of the Party who have quit, been fired, or just shunted aside. So why do I start tapping at my keyboard over this latest head to roll? Because it makes a mockery of everything that the Leadership and Federal council have done since the writ dropped in the last election.Read the rest here.
After the last election, the Party didn`t move as quickly as possible to repay election loans. The election plan had envisioned re-paying election loans with the election expenses rebate, as sound management would dictate. The leadership ignored sound management, and started spending like crazy. Never mind that there were known payments to be planned for, the money would somehow come from somewhere. Well, the money didn`t come from anywhere. Only when the situation became critical did anything happen. The response to the realisation that the money was not there was that the majority of the organisers were laid off. So there we were, and here we are. A National Party with full slate of directors, leader, deputy-leader, and communications staffers on the payroll, but NO FIELD ORGANISERS!
[...]
So to summarise, the current leadership has been exposed as hopelessly incompetent with our finances and Party management. They ramped up hiring and spending, then were forced to 180 and fire everybody. The response to the unfolding woes has been to re-focus the Party from encouraging and supporting local organising at the grassroots level, to making electing Elizabeth May the sole priority of the Party. The means to enable this strategic shift have entailed some very risky shell games with our money and Party. Now here we are, in the midst of this dubious and dangerous situation, and John Fryer, the man entrusted with the task of electing Elizabeth May in SGI up and quits in anger.
I am very discouraged by this latest news. Is it symptomatic of a looming failure in SGI? I can only see the two reasons for John to quit so abruptly. Either John quit because he sees a disaster in the offing, or he cannot stand working with the Leaders coterie. Either way, the large and risky investment our Federal council has made in SGI is in great peril at this moment. Were all the risks that council, and the Leadership took with our Party wasted on a Quioxitic strategy? Are we in the situation of dismembering our Party infrastructure, so that we can gamble on a losing pony? And what will we be left with if SGI is a bust? No Party infrastructure, no Leader, a whack of private loans to retire, and no strategic direction or resources. Without field organisers, there will not be a full slate of candidates, so the votes of GPC supporters from the missing ridings will not be counted. There goes a whack of funding. The attendant bad publicity of a drop in support, and the public humiliation of Elizabeth May might just be something we cannot get over safely. Oh my, what are we to do?
Personally, I think that the best thing that the Green Party of Canada could do, right now, to help stay afloat would be to remove Elizabeth May as its leader. Then, once all of their attention isn't focused on getting her elected ( which, you might remember, was almost precisely what the party wasn't about just a year or two ago ), they they can focus on restructuring and getting some good fundraising channels going and mobilizing a campaign.
You know, like a real party.
5 comments:
May's performances during the election debate, and even worse, at the Munk debate, were awful. I think that the 10% who vote for her are not paying attention to what is best for Canada. If you can't manage party finances and people, and can't pick a win-able riding, why on earth would anyone vote for this party????
Exactly. The unfortunate thing about Elizabeth May, and I almost hate to say it, is that she is exactly what women shouldn't be in politics. She's shrill, she's annoying, she's incompetent, and she's pushy. These are not qualities that a leader displays.
Elizabeth May makes me sick; especially during the leadership debate.
I watched the UK debates and couldn't believe how the Brits promoted their party's ideas and platforms, as opposed to our debates with the assembly of coalition. #1 strategy, try to make the PM look bad, that's it.
You must remember that Matthew Day rarely knows what he's talking about when it comes to the Green Party of Canada.
Well, I wouldn't know about that.
Post a Comment