Canada’s Top Filipino Politician Loses Post
Philippine News, News Report, Bertrand Quesada, Posted: Jul 11, 2004
VANCOUVER, Canada-- Federal Cabinet minister Dr. Rey Pagtakhan was among those booted out June 28 by voters who delivered a stern rebuke to the ruling Liberal Party but nonetheless gave it a new lease on life.
Pagtakhan, the highest ranking Filipino Canadian ever in federal politics, lost his seat in Parliament to the New Democratic Party’s Judy Wasylycia-Leis in the riding (electoral district) of Winnipeg North in Manitoba province.
Another Filipino Canadian who ran for Parliament, Romeo De La Peña of the Green Party, placed fourth among five candidates in the mostly Caucasian riding of South Surrey-White Rock-Cloverdale in British Columbia.
What was significant about De La Peña’s showing was the number of votes the Greens garnered: 3,033 or 5.7 percent of the popular vote in that riding – reflecting their huge gains nationally that qualified them for $1 million-plus in federal funding for the first time.
“We normally get less than 1,000 votes in my riding, so this is very encouraging,” remarked De La Peña, 55, a registered urban planner who ran an unsuccessful campaign in the 1996 B.C. parliamentary elections, also under the Green banner.
On the defeat of the 69-year-old Pagtakhan – who at various times was minister of veterans affairs, secretary of state for Asia Pacific and parliamentary secretary to the prime minister during Jean Chretien’s term, and until the last election the minister for western economic diversification in Paul Martin’s Cabinet – De La Peña said:
“There’s nothing wrong with Rey. He’s a good man. It was more of a vote against the Liberals than Pagtakhan.”
Liberal candidates spent much of the campaign fending off attacks on their federal sponsorship program, a project started during Chretien’s first term to promote federalism and campaign against the separatist movement in Quebec.
After leading the country with a majority of seats in Parliament since 1993, the Liberals won enough votes to continue ruling.
But as they have been reduced to a minority government, this time they would need to play the delicate balancing game of pushing their legislative agenda without risking a vote of no-confidence from three opposing camps.
The Liberal Party gained 135 ridings; the Conservatives, 99; the Bloc Québécois, 54; and the New Democrats, 19. The Liberals fell 20 seats short of the 155 needed to form a majority government.
In the months leading to the June 28 election, the party had been pilloried for allegedly handing out juicy contracts to groups friendly with the Liberals for little or no work at all.
Apart from Pagtakhan, among the high-profile Liberal candidates who lost in their ridings were ministers David Pratt (defense), Bob Speller (agriculture), Stan Keyes (national revenue and sport) and Hélène Scherrer (heritage).
Asked why his candidacy was covered by community papers in his riding but not by Filipino Canadian publications in Metro Vancouver, De La Peña, an architecture graduate of the Technological Institute of the Philippines who also holds a civil engineering degree from the Mapua Institute of Technology, explained:
"You know, it’s like this. Here in British Columbia, Filipinos are given to envy. That’s why in this election, I didn’t bother to court their vote.”
He cited a previous election campaign in which he helped another Filipino Canadian, Vincent Antonio, who despite wooing Pinoy voters for two months fared poorly in the polls.
“It’s really sad, but there is essentially no support,” De La Peña said.
In the meantime, Pagtakhan, whom Philippine News tried to contact several times but couldn’t reach until press time, was quoted by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. as saying he didn’t have definite plans for the future but would like to remain in the public service.
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