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In A Shocker, Andrew Wilkinson Beats Dianne Watts To Win The Bc Liberal Leadership In Close Race
And thankfully – this time, Indo-Canadians-South Asians didn’t play a decisive role and rightly so as the party made the rules fair and professional. And in fact Todd Stone lost because of his illegal membership sign ups!
By R. Paul Dhillon – Editor-Founder DESIBUZZCanada Photos & Video by Sukhwant Singh Dhillon
VANCOUVER – In a shocker of sorts, former BC Liberal Party president and current MLA Andrew Wilkinson beat so-called front-runner Dianne Watts in a close fight that came down to fifth ballot after any of the candidates failed to get the 50 percent plus one vote to win.
And thankfully – this time, Indo-Canadians-South Asians didn’t play a decisive role and rightly so as the party made the rules fair and professional. And in fact Todd Stone lost because of his illegal membership sign ups!
The BC Liberal leadership finale to crown a winner came down to a close race between all six candidates but the voter turnout was low, allowing Dianne Watts to jump to a narrow lead but Watts really needed much bigger distance between her and her nearest rival to win but it was only a lead of two percent and that meant it was over for her even though she led all four or the initial ballots but couldn’t get enough votes to win.
Watts, Michael Lee and Andrew Wilkinson were clearly the people to beat right from the first ballot as Todd Stone clearly suffered big on the ICBC count and illegal membership sign-ups and trailed Wilkinson for third place which was a surprise as Wilkinson had not signed up many members but was obviously was supported by the party membership to be
in third place.
But Mike Dejong and Sam Sullivan finished fifth and sixth – just where they were supposed to be – basically also-Rans!
Lee, the first Chinese-Canadian to seek the party leadership, was sitting pretty to have a great chance to win as Watts was not going to get enough support in subsequent ballots.
But in the end on the fifth and last ballot – it was Wilkinson and not Lee, who was sitting pretty and won the BC Liberal leadership with over 500 votes over Watts, whose political career has now come to an end!
