Liberal nomination troubles inside baseball, unlikely to sway most voters

For all the Trudeaumania redux surrounding the federal Liberals since Justin Trudeau took the helm, the party has had some very old-school problems around its nomination process.

Trudeau has been accused of going back on his promise to allow open fights for riding nominations and instead getting in his favoured picks. There have been hard feelings in some, including the Ottawa-area riding of Orléans, where former general Andrew Leslie was acclaimed, and in Brantford-Brant, the key southern Ontario battleground where a hurried nomination vote resulted in the only registered candidate being acclaimed.

Bitterness now surrounds the likely coronation of a candidate in the B.C. riding Vancouver South, where the other main contender pulled out of the race ahead of this Friday’s nomination, leaving the field clear for another ex-military man whom Trudeau apparently prefers.

[ Related: Andrew Leslie’s Liberal nomination win draws protest ]

The situation in the riding is complicated by a layer of ethnic politics as Sikh factions within the Liberal party have battled over the nomination.

It seems likely former Lt.-Col. Harjit Singh Sajjan, the first Sikh to command a Canadian Forces regiment, will be acclaimed at this Friday’s nomination meeting for the riding, which has swung back and forth between the Liberals and Conservatives for most of the last 100 years.

Vancouver South currently is held by Conservative Wai Young, who in 2008 defeated three-time Liberal incumbent Ujjal Dosangh, the former B.C. NDP premier.

Sajjan was expected to have vigorous competition for the nomination from Vancouver businessman Barj Dhahan. But he abruptly withdrew late last month despite having signed up thousands of new Liberal members to support his bid.

"This campaign has gone on longer than I initially expected and the Liberal Party has a preferred candidate," Dhahan said in a statement on his web site.

"After much thought, I have decided that I will not seek this nomination, and will instead support the Liberal Party of Canada’s efforts in other ways."

Sikh factions said to be involved in Liberal infighting

NowCBC News is reporting many of the 4,000 people Dhahan signed up for the party will tear up their cards in protest.

Some of his supporters claimed to CBC that Trudeau is being swayed by Sikhs within the party who support the World Sikh Organization (WSO), which campaigns for an independent Sikh state in India’s Punjab.

Sajjan, a decorated veteran of the Afghanistan mission, is the son of one of the leaders of the WSO, whose supporters have been feuding with more moderate Canadian Sikhs over control of temples in Metro Vancouver. They supported Dhahan.

Dhahan turned down a request from Yahoo Canada News for an interview, but has avoided questions around whether he was pushed out.

"I decided to withdraw in the end for the best interests of our community, for also the best interests of the party," he told the Indo-Canadian Voice last month.

There were, however, reports the party was looking into whether Dhahan had bought memberships for his supporters, something a supporter told Yahoo Canada News could be designed to persuade a candidate to step aside.

Dhahan told the Voice he was offered a nomination in another riding but declined because his home is in Vancouver South, which has a substantial Indo-Canadian population.

A senior Liberal insider, speaking on background, told Yahoo Canada News Dhahan withdrew before the “green-lighting process” used to vet candidates for potential skeletons was completed.

He said this or any other nomination flap in the country is unlikely to have an effect on the election campaign itself, which is scheduled for next fall, unless Prime Minister Stephen Harper calls one sooner.

Voters don’t follow internal party machinations

Most voters doing don’t pay attention to the internal machinations of a political party, the Liberal source said.

He noted Dosanjh himself was appointed by then-prime minister Paul Martin over several popular candidates in 2003 after Martin dumped incumbent Herb Dhaliwal, who’d supported Jean Chretien against Martin’s successful leadership challenge.

[ Related: Liberal risk losing credibility over promise of open nominations ]

That said, the party will reach out to disaffected Dhahan supporters to try and keep them in the fold. They may be needed come election time because Sajjan is thought not to have much of a base in the riding to help him campaign, which would require importing workers from elsewhere in the Lower Mainland.

Longtime Liberal organizer Jagdeep Sanghera has already resigned from the riding’s election-readiness committee. His letter to the party, reproduced in the Voice accused the Liberals of besmirching Dhahan’s reputation with the membership audit.

The Liberals don’t think the furor will harm their chances in B.C., where the senior Liberal said they have a strong chance of gains in several Vancouver-area ridings and possibly southern Vancouver Island.

The Liberals currently hold only two of 36 B.C. seats, with the Conservatives at 21, the NDP at 12 and one Green Party MP.

The Grits may be right, said University of Toronto political scientist Nelson Wiseman.

"When the election comes people will go into that booth and because most people vote on the basis of party rather than for the local candidate … . it won’t matter," he said.

"The party brass knows that.”

Longtime party supporters will probably just suck it up if they smell a victory, Wiseman suggested.

"At the end of the day a lot of them will just go along with what the party wants because they can’t imagine themselves joining the NDP or the Conservatives."