Friday, March 01, 2013

Will the axe fall today on one of Premier Christy Clark's top, most loyal staffers, Kim Haakstad?

UPDATE -  Premier Christy Clark has accepted the resignation of Kim Haakstad, as of late afternoon - as predicted here earlier today.

Original posting from 2:45 p.m.:

Will Premier Christy Clark bow to public, media and most importantly, BC Liberal Caucus pressure to fire Kim Haakstad?

It's Friday afternoon at the end of a particularly disastrous week for the BC Liberal government - reeling in public and private over disclosure of the ethnic voting scandal coordinated directly by Premier Christy Clark's own Deputy Chief of Staff - Kim Haakstad.
Kim Haakstad

There are only 10 weeks left until the May 14 provincial election - having a political scandal story with the proverbial "legs" means that the BC Liberal Party is unable to get its preferred message out and attempt to be competitive with the BC NDP.

That's darn hard anytime you are 16% behind your opponents - but it's impossible when every day's big media story is more bad news about your government or party.

So, regardless of any niceties like who is really to blame or whether it's fair, any political advisor from any political party would come to the same conclusion - you have to fire Kim Haakstad immediately to stop the bleeding.

If not, Christy Clark can start counting the days until she has to pack up her stuff in the premier's office and move out.

When you get advice like this from BC Liberal MLA Kash Heed - not exactly a pristine source himself - you know you are in trouble.  Heed told CKNW AM 980's Shane Woodford that:

"There needs to be immediate, appropriate, and significant consequences that were involved in this type of behaviour," Heed said. "If you continue down this particular route the wheels will definitely fall off." 

So there's Christy Clark's choice: either heads will roll or wheels will fall off!

And already CKNW is reporting three BC Liberal constituency presidents have quit their posts - not clear if connected to the ethnic voting scandal or not but in these 

Not a lot of choice except for the timing - and late Friday afternoon is the traditional time to send out bad news.  

Once you've come to the conclusion that someone has to go to pay for the crisis, delaying the implementation can only cause more and more trouble and more coverage.

Stay tuned.

.





7 comments:

The Old Guy said...

bILL:
This is about three or four times this year in which I have agreed with you. This has to stop. I have nothing personal against Christy. Nor did I have anything against Carole James. It's just that they have been distrous for their respective parties.
Go Christy, go.
Regards,
Sandy Macdougall

DPL said...

As of 5 PM, one down and who can guess if more to follow. Martyne Brown was on the CBC and covered a few of the bases. The Chinese community leaders were quite concerned about some of the proceedings, as was the Indo -Canadian folks. Way to go Christy, you sure run a lousy government and have no one to blame but yourself. Hope Mid May gets here before she sells the province

Anonymous said...

For 13 years, I watched Federal Liberal Youth Trash . . . B.J. their way through the federal and provincial systems.

From the ranks of UBC, SFU and UVic grads and drop-outs came much of the political vermin at the center of the EthnoGate and BasiGate scandals.

Christy would have never even made it to MLA status without the ego-driven patronage (and fixing) of the Hon. David Anderson P.C. O.C who fast tracked her through the party organization.

So if any of you want to ask how and why BC has fallen so low, ask Dr. Frankenstein in Victoria, since he created the Christy Monster and its league of money chasing zombies.

The GREAT SATAN

Keith E. said...

Hi Bill,

the ad where the dominoes keep falling and how much longer the "concerned citizens" will keep running the ad. re; Dix's memo is anyone's guess. Two examples of life imitating art.

Anonymous said...

So the Great Devilled Ham watched those evil Young Liberals.

he should talk. His hero was Pierre Elliott Trudeau the worst PM Canada has had.

Also don't forget those Young Liberals were the sons and daughters of his Liberal Party.

Anonymous said...

Why you're all picking on Christy beats me. Her academic record almost proves she isn't capable of creating the chaos that's attributed to her. Surely there's someone amongst your ilk that's smart enough to determine who is the mastermind of all, or most, of her misfortunes.
Why then are we not going after the real perpetrator off all the ills, gaffs, thefts and lies that have befallen us, the taxpayers.
I pity the next leader of this bankrupt piece of used-to-be paradise. I doubt that I'll be around long enough to see its revival!
John's Aghast

Anonymous said...

So you pity Adrian Dix?

On this blog??