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British Columbians wanted change
5-17-2017
As our estimation stand proven, May 9th, 2017 Provincial Elections remains to be a nail-biter. We had predicted that several riding’s margin of victory may be less than 100 votes. At least one riding the margin of victory is 9 votes. Surely, we will not know the final results until May 25, once 176,000 Absentee Ballots have been counted. Based on approximate average, that’s about 2000 votes per riding. Even after May 25th, the parties could request recounts and/or Judicial recounts, if the difference is less than 100 votes. Regardless of what the outcome might be. The local Muslim community deserves a big applause for their active participation in current provincial electoral process. Finally, local Muslim Community members came out of their voters apathy cocoon.
Kudos to hundreds of Muslim Community Volunteers who managed to take the time out of their busy schedule, rearranging their children’s extracurricular activities, to volunteer in local or regional riding campaigns alongside all three parties, BC NDP, Greens, and BC Liberals camps. It was evident that our community members were on the ground making phone calls, knocking doors, at street corners, even making appearances promotional ads by the parties.
On behalf of AlAmeen Post a very big thank you to the youth in our community, who despite being unable to vote were present, actively volunteering in local ridings campaign offices. This is where a promising change lies for our community. There is no better place to learn about political activism than working in campaign offices during the elections.
The participation among Muslim voters was just a bit short of the high as it was during the previous federal elections.
Although some confusion had erupted among local Muslim voters over which party deserves their votes. Many people thought the BC Liberals are the same as the Federal Liberals counterparts. During our all candidates meeting, the question about difference between federal and provincial parties came up more few times.
However, we believe, this problem was simply not limited to our community alone, rather a wider issue affecting many newcomers or first time voters, who were unaware of BC’s political history. As we witnessed several days before the elections CBC Vancouver ran multiple stories educating British Columbians about the astronomical differences between the Federal Liberals and Provincial BC Liberals. Highlighting the fact that BC Liberals have more in common with the Center-Left Federal Conservatives than they do with the Center Left Liberals.
The election results proved that British Columbians wanted change and there remains a very good chance, once the dust settles that they might just achieve it.
At least in BC Lower Mainland, elections results proved the educational journey for many of the voters was transformational resulting in many last-minute conversion. Thus, narrowing the margin of victory in terms of seats for the BC Liberals and possible repeat of 2013 outcome.
Clearly, there are some parallels that can be drawn between the federal and provincial voting patterns. Ridings across BC, which traditionally have voted heavily for the Federal Conservatives, went to the BC Liberals. Similarly, ridings that voted heavily for the federal Liberals in past general elections voted NDP during the recently held Provincial elections.
Despite being one of the closely watched elections in BC History, and burning desire for the Change Voters apathy, in general, remained high. On Tuesday, May 9th, 1.3 million British Columbians decided they could not put their trust in government.
Despite the above, voter’s turnout was at sixty percent, compared to fifty five percent in 2013, up five percent.
Record number of voters, 614,389 casted their ballots during the advance voting. This compared to only 380,741 who voted during advance voting in 2013. A whopping sixty two percent increase from 2013.
Overall, BC Liberals captured the popular vote at 40.84%, down 3.28% from previous elections at 44.14%. Overall BC Liberals lost 4 seats, including four prominent cabinet ministers. Two of the from Surrey alone, Peter Fassbender, Surrey-Fleetwood, and Amrik Virk, in Surrey Guildford.
On the contrary, Green Party tripled their seats in the legislature from one to three, capturing 16.75% of the popular vote, doubling their popular vote bank from 8.13% in 2013.
NDP popular vote gain remain less than 1%, capturing 39.85% of the popular votes, up by only 0.14%, 39.71% in 2013. Nonetheless, NDP gained six more seats in the legislature. So far blocking BC Liberals majority.
This demonstrates that BC NDP have managed to hold their vote banks, and most of the Green victory was at the expense of BC Liberals.
Finally, many of our community members still wondering why there was no Muslim MLA elected.
Reflecting on this conundrum, we are of the view that simply having a Muslim MLA in the legislature is not an answer to our conundrum. A Muslim MLA or MP with barely possessing a Muslim name may not be the best to serve our community or its interests.
There have been few notable federal MP’s, and provincial MLA’s that have proven their mettle as an effective voice for the Muslim community. Sometimes it is better to have a strong effective voice in the legislature than to just have weak and ineffective Muslim voice.
We as a community need to groom an effective Muslim representative who could bring the concerns of Muslim Community Members to the parliament or the legislature. Unfortunately, so far there is not a single person who could fulfill those needs, and until such time the quest shall continue. However, the most important part is for us to make our presence known – the rest will fall in place, while we continue our quest to find that effective and inspirational voice.
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