Former BC NDP MLA Corky Evans said many things during his memorable retirement speech in the legislature. He talked about his failures as a cabinet minister. He talked about his advice for new MLAs who would be elected three months later during the 2009 election.
But, surprisingly, one of the things the maverick legislator didn’t talk much about was party discipline, except to tell his colleagues, “Refuse to say words that are not your own. You are not an actor; an election is not a screen test. You wouldn’t let anybody else put you in a box, so don’t do it to yourself.”
Four years later, however, he’s expanded on that theme as part of an explanation about why the BC NDP lost the last election. In a letter, posted by blogger Richard Hughes, Evans writes:
“I remember when one of the Leaders I worked for asked some guys many of us know to purge our Party of the troublemakers (that was not the word he used.)
They did a good job. We got Slates so the people we didn’t like couldn’t serve in Executive positions. We got Mike Muffins (members with nothing to say who stand in the line at the microphone) at Convention so they couldn’t speak. Candidates got a Message Box and were told not to say what they thought and to stick strictly to only what they were given to say.
The ‘troublemakers’ were sidelined and we became an effective, and boring, machine. Leaders and Leaders staff tell MLA’s what they can and cannot say and punish independent thinking Or, worse, speaking their mind. We are now a modern political machine, and we sound like one.”
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