Friday, September 12, 2008

Elizabeth May to throw Green votes to Dion

says LaPresse : May prête à tout pour battre Harper

At least I think that's what this article says.
Ok here goes my truly terrible French translation :

The leader of the Green Party, Elizabeth May, will ask her troops in the last sprint of the electoral campaign to put all their political weight behind the liberal candidates of Stephan Dion in certain districts where the fight is tight in order to block Stephen Harper's Conservatives.
This forms integral part of the non-aggression pact concluded between the leader of the Green Party and the Liberal leader Stephan Dion in April 2007, LaPresse learned yesterday

OK, we knew that, but :

But this pact also provides that Mrs. May possibly decides in favour of the election of Stephan Dion for Prime Minister in the last days of the electoral campaign. This electoral strategy had never been revealed up to now.
"The idea of the agreement, it is like a non-aggression pact so that the day before the vote, the environmentalist forces in the urban centres join Stephan Dion. In the discussions with Mrs. May, it was implicitly understood that she will launch a call in favour of Mr. Dion. That was always the spirit of the agreement", affirmed a liberal source well acquainted with the talks between the Liberals and the Greens.

Wow. If someone more fluent in French can give me a less clunky translation, I'd be grateful.

Update : "May says there is no deal between her party and the Liberals beyond what she called the leaders' "courtesy arrangement" of not running candidates in each other's ridings.
"There's no truth to it whatsoever," May told reporters at a campaign stop in Toronto.

During the 2007 Green leadership contest, rival David Chernushenko accused May of having actually asked some Green candidates to consider withdrawing from the 2006 election to avoid splitting the centre-left vote and thus helping the Tories.
May rejected Chernushenko's characterization of her actions but acknowledged that she did speak to some Green candidates a week before the 2006 vote.
"I was calling them in desperation to say: What could we do? Could you for instance interest the Liberals if they were interested in talking about proportional representation? Was there room for a coalition there?"

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm glad the truth about May is starting to come out. She hijacked the Green party to make it a stalking horse for the Liberals. May called on people to vote Liberal in 2006, and will do the same in 2008.

Anonymous said...

Holy shit! This will sink Dion too.

Tuttle

Anonymous said...

The Greens need a liberal-led parliament to be influential. Canada needs a Harper defeat to, well, enjoy any kind of non-depressing future. Good for the party, good for the country, good on may and dion for being realistic and ballsy.

Frank Frink said...

Alison, no problem with that translation. I read through the La Presse article and your translation is actually quite excellent.

Alison said...

Thanks, Frank.

I'm not sure what I think of this coalition strategy, supposing it's true, other than it seems rather unfair to Green candidates and riding associations.
I'm ABC at this point - if a Dion/May coalition can keep Harper from getting a majority, I'm for it.

RossK said...

A--

This ABC is a bit of a change for you, is it not?

.

Alison said...

Yes. Consider me driven to desperation by FPtP. I don't approve of strategic voting, it most certainly would not be a coalition of the "parties of the left", and it doesn't sit well that the Libs have been calling for it right across the board in every election in every riding since year dot.
But yeah, depending on your riding, yeah.
In my riding, Sea-to-Sky-to Remembering-the-Good-Old-Days-When-We-Had-Reynolds-West Van, the SoCon is gonna walk with it.

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