Further confirmation today that the Wildrose Party's registration petition is in trouble:
... party organizer (and senator-elect) Link Byfield tells me the party is now one-third of the way to collecting the 6,000 signatures it needs to become official.2,000 measly signatures?
What happened to the "overwhelming positive response" Rob James was boasting about in the July 7 edition of the National Post?
This admission from Link Byfield basically confirms the prediction I made back on September 9. There is no way the Wildrose Party is going to meet its self-imposed September 30 deadline. The September 30 deadline came about when the Wildrose Party announced its "new plan" on September 5. The September 5 plan, which replaced the plan that had been in effect for July and August, asked members to blindly "commit 2 hours over the next 3 weeks." The Wildrose Executive predicted that the plan would result in successful completion of the petition so long as enough members agreed to take up the 2 hour challenge. Given that the total number of signatures gathered remains far short of the registration benchmark of 6,004, it is clear that few members responded positively to the Executive's plea, and the mysterious "new plan" has proven to be a flop, just like the first plan.
I hope Wildrose Party members have learned some lessons from what has transpired here. Albertans aren't stupid, and do not appreciate it when politicians treat them disrespectfully. The Party Executive is to blame for this fiasco, and, assuming the Party remains unregistered by the date of the convention on October 26, the Wildrose membership should demand an explanation from the Executive as to what went wrong here.
It seems clear to me that the Wildrose members are no longer responding to the current Executive, so it may be time to consider what changes need to be made in the Executive suite.
Incidentally, the main thrust of Terry O'Neill's blog post was to congratulate the Wildrose Party for coming out against the recommendations contained in the final report of the Alberta Royalty Review Panel. I am still considering this report, but am prepared to go on record now and state that it is abundantly clear to me that Rob James hasn't read the report, or doesn't understand it.
I wish to thank him for handing me such a lightweight and feckless response to a such a complex and important issue. I intend on using the Wildrose Party's news release as a club, and will be beating them over the head with it in the months to come - rhetorically of course.
