Ignatieff Wants Rae BC Delegates Disqualified

It's been a nasty week in Canadian politics and Liberal leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff has been smack dab in the middle of all of it. On top of the chaos he caused by calling the massacre at Qana a 'war crime' which prompted PM Harper to declare that 'virtually all' of the Liberal leadership candidates are 'anti-Israeli' (a very crass move) along with the resignation of Ignatieff's campaign co-chair and an angry letter by Irwin Cotler's wife to the National Post declaring that his statement has caused her to leave the party, Ignatieff is now trying to nullify the votes of most of Bob Rae's delegates in BC - all of this just prior to Sunday's debate.

OTTAWA (CP) - The Liberal leadership race is getting ugly with Michael Ignatieff's camp urging the party to negate most of chief rival Bob Rae's delegate support in British Columbia.

In an appeal filed Friday and obtained by The Canadian Press, Ignatieff operations director Sachin Aggarwal accuses Rae's senior B.C. organizer of perpetrating "systematic fraud" during the sign-up of potential delegates in the province.

Aggarwal contends that fully 78 of Rae's 111 B.C. delegates are tainted by the fraud and he urges the party to strip Rae of those delegate spots.
[...]
In B.C., Rae took the largest share of delegates - almost 30 per cent. By contrast, Ignatieff had one of his weakest showings in the province, where he ran fourth with 17 per cent.

All Liberals who wanted to run for a delegate spot were required to sign and submit a "form 6" to the party by Sept. 15.

The Rae camp itself alerted the party to a problem with its forms last week, after it noticed that the signatures on some 200 forms did not match those on party membership cards. At the same time, Rae accepted the resignation of his B.C. campaign chair, Mason Loh, who had submitted the forms.

At the Rae camp's urging, Liberal national returning officer Remy Bujold this week disqualified 78 Rae delegates whose forms were not in order. However, he ruled that alternate Rae supporters whose forms were in order could be bumped up to take the suddenly vacant spots.
[...]
Rae's camp reacted to the appeal, and its leak to CP, with barely restrained fury.

"All campaigns should work through the processes set up to examine such claims rather than simply go to the media with appeals filled with hyperbole and allegations not rooted in the rules," said Alex Swann, a Rae campaign spokesman.

He said the timing of the appeal is "odd if not suspicious," coming just as Ignatieff is mired in controversy after accusing Israel of war crimes.

Swann said Bujold consulted with all camps about how to deal with the problem before ruling on the matter.

"They were given ample time to object and did not."

Has Ignatieff shot himself in the foot yet again?

The upcoming debate sure promises to be interesting to say the least.