Angry in the Great White North

Now Stephane Dion actually made his intentions clear ahead of today's news conference to the Liberal Party leadership.  As (3)(a) explains, the National Executive meets to appoints the Interim Leader within 27 days of the Leader stepping down.

So who is the National Executive?

22 Composition of the National Executive

(1) The National Executive consists of:

(a) the following voting members (referred to in this Constitution as the “Executive Officers”):

The National President

The National Vice-President (English)

The National Vice-President (French)

The National Policy Chair

The Membership Secretary

(b) the following additional voting members:

The Leader

The Past National President, who is the person, other than the existing National President, who was most recently elected to the office of National President

The PTA President of each of the PTAs

One representative of the Caucus

The chief executive officer of each Commission (or, if there is more than one chief executive officer of a Commission, one of those chief executive officers chosen by the Commission).

Here's the list.  It's not short.

First, Douglas Ferguson, Mike Crawley, Brigitte Legault, Joan Bourassa, and Robert Harnish Jamieson are the Executive Officers.  The other voting members are Stephane Dion, Mike Eizenga, Danny Dumaresque, Brenda Hackett, Derek Wells, Britt Dysart, Robert Fragasso, Meredith Caplan, Sharon MacArthur, Frank Proto, George Hodgson, Craig Munroe, Christie Richardson, Anthony Rota, Joshua Fraser, Nicole Foster Woollatt, and Catherine Ryan.  There may be a few others, since I'm not certain that the Young Liberals count as a "commission", for example.

So who did Stephane Dion talk to?

Dion, who loped into his resignation news conference wearing a puppy-dog grin, announced he'll be sticking around as party leader until a leadership convention "to ensure a smooth and successful transition."

He brushed off questions about whether his fractious parliamentary caucus had agreed to this extended farewell, saying only that he'd "informed" both the Liberal party president and caucus chairman Anthony Rota.

"Well, why not?" Dion added as an afterthought, as if his continued interim leadership was a no-brainer. (The rumblings of dissent began almost the moment he left the building.)

Douglas Ferguson and Anthony Rota?  That's it?

Maybe Ferguson got the Executive on an emergency conference call to sign off on Dion's decision.  Maybe the meeting was held before the election, pre-authorizing this possibility once it became clear that the election was lost.  But 54(3) is clear.  The National Executive must call a meeting to sign off on the appointment of an Interim Leader.  The Constitution does not envision the automatic movement of the Leader into the role of Interim Leader.

I wonder if any Liberals are asking questions about whether the party's Constitution has been ignored in the rush to move beyond Stephane Dion.  If Stephane Dion and Douglas Ferguson made this move on their own (with Anthony Rota providing a veneer of caucus respectability), then I'd call it a putsch, deposing Stephane Dion in order to put Stephane Dion in charge.