In an opinion piece about political leadership in the Toronto Star, columnist Martin Regg Cohn twice refers to the Ontario Liberal Party's recent review of the leadership of its provincial leader as a "regicide."
You know, the leader of a provincial party is not an absolute monarch. And this one is is not dead at all. Actually she remains the leader. The same constituency that chose Bonnie Crombie leader a few years ago recently gave weak support to her continued leadership, and she declared she would resign at a date to be chosen later. That's the extent of it.
Where does this insanely violent language about political party leadership in Canada come from? Every time a political leader faces some challenge to their authority, our pundits and political scientists pull words like "regicide," "coup," and "overthrow" from their bag of tired cliches. What so terrifies them about the concept of accountability?
What they should be calling for is real accountability. There's another story today about how Quebec's Liberal party leadership may have been won by the handing out of hundred dollar bills to anyone who would put their name to a party "membership" application. The article points out that such behaviour by political parties is not illegal, just sort of frowned upon. Why don't columnists inquire when will we ever have legitimate leadership selection processes?
It's not a matter of legislation to end the legal corruption in the political parties. We just need to understand that discipline has to be a power of the party caucus, not the leader, with the leader being subject to discipline like any other member of caucus.
You cannot have a functioning parliament without parliamentarians. And they are not really parliamentarians unless they have authority, including the authority to remove and replace their leaders if necessary.
And it still would not be regicide, no matter what they would tell you.
