Coalition of Progressive Electors is not Vision Vancouver's bitch
The Coalition of Progressive Electors says it's inaccurate to describe the left-wing party as a "junior partner".
The executive director, Alvin Singh, maintains that COPE is an "independent political party", despite any electoral arrangement it might have with other organizations.
"I would appreciate it if in the future you could refrain from using that term again," Singh wrote in an e-mail to reporter Carlito Pablo.
I referred to COPE as Vision Vancouver's "junior partner" in an August 29, 2010 blog post.
This came after a review of all COPE news releases since the 2008 election. Until that point, COPE had not criticized a single Vision Vancouver politician by name in any of its bulletins sent to the media.
Two days after that post, COPE did an about-face and issued a news release entitled "Mayor Robertson's plan for West End consultation not good enough".
So why is this an issue now? It's because COPE will hold a special general meeting on June 26 to ratify an electoral agreement with Vision Vancouver for the 2011 campaign. And COPE is sensitive to concerns from some members that it's a stalking horse for Mayor Gregor Robertson's Vision Vancouver, which includes provincial and federal Liberals and New Democrats.
Under the proposed arrangement, COPE would be permitted to run three candidates for council, whereas Vision Vancouver would run seven.
In addition, COPE would put two candidates on the ballot for park board, whereas Vision would be able to field five—if the Greens refuse to join the alliance and take one spot on the ballot for the park board.
And COPE would run four board of education candidates, whereas Vision Vancouver would run five. All parties to this agreement would endorse Gregor Robertson as the mayoral candidate for Vision Vancouver.
If the deal is ratified, just don't expect to hear COPE refer to itself as Vision Vancouver's bitch—oops, I meant, as its junior partner.
Comments
6 Comments
Lawson1945
Jun 13, 2011 at 3:08pm
Message to Alvin Singh. All voters want to do is get people like you and Vision Vancouver out of municipal politics, you have proven you cannot be trusted, your to expensive for the taxpayers of Vancouver. You stupid bike lanes are only one example!
DPA
Jun 13, 2011 at 3:14pm
if it walks like a biatch, and talks like biatch and makes agreements like a biatch then I would say it's a BIATCH!
You makes your bed and you lay in it.
Cry all day long, if COPE isn't Vision's "bitch" then they would have the gumption to run closer to a full slate and wouldn't need an agreement with their masters.
HateSpeech
Jun 13, 2011 at 3:46pm
While the information provided by this blog post is valuable, the use of b***h is unnecessary. Given that the word is used as a slur against women, or is used against men to connote their "feminization" in a disparaging way, why would you possibly say that?
And yes, the fact that you put a picture of a female dog in the blog post is not an excuse, everyone knows what you mean.
asdfde
Jun 13, 2011 at 6:56pm
Why is COPE ratifying the agreement after the Vision nomination? It's a shame that COPE is aligning itself with a party that is making Vancouver so unaffordable. The parties are opposites, but COPE's stance legitimizes what Vision is doing.
phil lg
Jun 19, 2011 at 9:01am
If COPE had the strength it had, meaning solidarity, when Libby Davies, Harry Rankin and Bruce Erickson were councilors, it could run a full slate like it did when TEAM was in power.
TEAM of course was made up in the 70's of mainly dissatisfied Liberal and Conservative poobahs who were fed up with the NPA.
At that time organized labour was solidly behind COPE. Now more interested in their union pension investments and returns, union execs have gone over to the Tony Blair School of Neoliberalism. No longer interested in a dialogue with their members or their members social concerns, these execs collect fees and field dues and shut their membership out of anything political in nature. Hence, labour is moving more conservative rather than progressive.
You can't blame Vision for the economic problems of Vancouver (except Meggs, Louie and Stevenson) as the problems stem from the financial obligations of the Athletes Village. This agreement of financing the village was signed by the NPA after the civic election in 2002 while they still had legal authority.
Of course, Larry Campbell was never a leftie but saw an advantage by joining COPE and running under their banner only to become a lout who hung out with his Point Grey buds, Gord Campbell and Mike McBride. Happy with his role in steering the expensive Olympics through much criticism, he split the labour movement and COPE and laid the ground for Vision.
Vision, like TEAM, has lost its shine like an antique piece of silver. With a full recognizable slate from COPE it would split the vote and see more NPA candidates elected.
The City is too valuable a plum to Christy Clark's Liberals to see get into the hands of COPE or Vision. They control a majority of metro local governments or at least have enough councilors and mayors to remain silent when another of their poor policies inflicts themselves on regional residents.
My 2 cents.
Jun 21, 2011 at 8:48am
I like Phil's long commentary. But I think he contradicts himself. He compares VIsion to Team, which is right on, but then implies that Vision is some sort of alternative party (Van is 'too valuable' for the Libs to allow it to fall into VIsion's hands). In fact, I think Ms Clark, and many of her MLAs would be right at home within Vision.
I also think Phil and many other bright politicos underestimate Vision. I see Vision as having united the real estate developers, hoteliers, entertainment industries, while also they continue to attract the lightest of light liberals. I think Vision is well positioned to win again, unfortunately.
Hope I'm wrong. The main threat to Vision would be a party that ran against it from the left, and that is why they continue to keep COPE as their loyal opposition. Now is the time for the Greens to break from the pack and run a full slate against both Vision and COPE. They could break COPE. They would also assist the NPA (too bad), but they would come out it as the lead party on the left.