Part 1 focused on the retirements and the Mayor's slate.
The next undeclared, not legally registered party/slate is Voices or Independant Voices or whatever they have called themselves in the past. It's best to carefully read my prior posts on them to piece together the Voices chronology.
Councillor Bookham tore a strip off me prior to the last Council meeting in December, stating I should not be saying there was two NDP parties than run politics and Council. Of course, I didn't mean as an arm of the NDP, even the Mayor's crew is arms length from the formal party. Bookham defended herself by stating she was a provincial NDPer and a federal Liberal so somehow that doesn't mean than she's an NDPer. Municipal government is a child of the Province not the Federal government. Provincial legislation creates municipalities and can control any action of Council. In the provincial election last spring, Mussatto, Keating, Buchanan and Bookham acted to elect the NDP. Bell and Heywood worked to elect and Clark who didn't get involved in the campaign as far as I know. I bet he voted NDP to help create a byelection so his protege Nichol could run. The damage done to our province be damned.
Whose Voice are we hearing?
Voices was born out of the Community Associations concerned primarily about development. So course, they butted heads with Councillor and then Mayor Mussatto and his NDP team who were extremely pro-development. But since they were strongly left wing and NDP supporters it was difficult for them to shape into an opposing force to Mayor Mussatto's team as the more formal role as the municipal wing of the NDP.
Bookham helped start out the Coalition of Community Associations and was the first Co-originator (President) which was intended to act as an umbrella group to strengthen the neighborhood Community Associations. The names and candidates appear in the future in ads published by Voices, or Independent Voices as they were registered under in the election of 2011, in 2008 they Officers and contact people
The Voices leadership has a pathological fear of being perceived as a political party since they perceive Mayor Mussatto's crew of NDPers as a political party in a federal or provincial sense. Victoria Civic Electors was founded by the Victoria Labour Council to be an arm of the NDP but no party would ever have formal municipal arms.
Who is in charge of VOICES?
There is no publicly revealed Board of Directors. By avoiding revealing who fills the leadership roles, it appears that they are purposely avoiding revealing that the people in charge of VOICES will end up as their pre-arranged choice of "independents" in November. Don Bell is not involved with them but has received their endorsement to leave the implication that this is part of Don's team so if you are going to vote for him, then vote for these other 6 candidates. A subtle manipulation.
Hey, VOICES since you demand transparency from Council, how about you follow your own advice?
Legally register, publish your Board, be up front and stop being deceptive.
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