Powell River-Sunshine Coast MLA Nicholas Simons confirmed his support for premier-designate David Eby after rival Anjali Appadurai was disqualified from the NDP leadership contest last Wednesday following a report by the party's chief electoral officer, Elizabeth Cull.
Eby is “that bold leader who’s shown a capacity to tackle significant issues against challenging odds,” Simons told Coast Reporter Oct. 21, the same day Cull declared Eby leader of the NDP. “I think he’s going to bring that to a number of the challenges our province faces. I have confidence in his skills and I’m excited already by his successes.”
The NDP constituency association for the Powell River-Sunshine Coast submitted a letter on Oct. 12 to the BC NDP Executive Council expressing concern over the integrity of the party’s democracy, after it was announced that Appadurai’s campaign was under investigation.
Following the release of Cull’s report, association president Bill Forst told Coast Reporter there was “misinformation about our letter,” specifically that the association asked that Appadurai not be disqualified.
The letter called on the Executive to approve Appadurai as a leadership candidate “unless conclusive evidence is brought forward by the final candidate deadline.”
“The BC NDP Executive concluded that there was conclusive evidence, and so they disqualified her,” said Forst.
Simons said he supports the association’s “right to send a letter.”
“To be fair, it was sent prior to the party’s report. I trust the party’s process and the work that went into making their findings, so in light of the report I think the right decisions have been made,” adding the report was “clear and was conducted fairly.”
As for the riding’s membership, Forst said that based on his 40 years of experience on the local Executive, members are “likely fairly evenly split on the issue.”
“Our local Executive will be reaching out over the next few weeks to all members, starting with the new members, to ask how they are feeling about process and about the new leader, and encouraging them to stay with the Party to work with us to ensure that our internal democratic processes be fair and transparent.”
According to the Cull report, Appadurai engaged in “serious improper conduct by coordinating with third parties, including Dogwood, that conducted membership drives on her behalf.”
Cull said in the report that disqualification was the only viable option because interference by third parties was so significant that it would be “impossible to create a level playing field” and “to restore the Leadership Election Campaign to a state of integrity in which I could have confidence.”
The Eby campaign was among those that complained about Appadurai’s campaign.
Avi Lewis, a former federal NDP candidate for West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country was also referenced in the report due to his involvement in an Aug. 6 videoconference that included establishing a party membership sign-up challenge with third-party organization Dogwood and others in attendance.
Lewis, who described himself as a “super volunteer” on the campaign, defended Appadurai’s campaign after the report was published.
In a statement, Appadurai also defended her campaign’s actions, and said the Aug. 6 call was a “very common first step in considering a leadership run.”
Following her disqualification, on Oct. 21 Appadurai said, “I maintain from day one our campaign strove to do things with integrity.
“We used good old-fashioned organizing and not any kind of collusion or trickery to sign up the number of organizers that we did. And we were held retroactively responsible for the actions of other organizations and that’s something I believe is unfair.”
In a CBC Radio interview on Oct. 21, Anjali said she was never an approved candidate.
– With files from Keili Bartlett
