I was looking for an existing thread to post this, but I think it warrants its own:
Greg Selinger stepping down as MLA:
The announcement comes a week after NDP Leader Wab Kinew asked Selinger to resign in the wake of inappropriate touching allegations by seven women against former MLA Stan Struthers, while Selinger was leader of the party.A defiant Selinger, 67, offered an apology to those women last week but said he was not ready to step down.
On Tuesday, he read a prepared statement saying he's concerned not stepping down at the time took away from the important message about sexual harassment.
Selinger then told reporters he wasn't ready when Kinew made the call because he first wanted to consult the St. Boniface community he has represented as MLA since 1999, as well as his constituency and his family.
This is good news, but it is far too late. Selinger came to prominence as Finance Minister under Gary Doer. Under his watch, the Manitoba government continued the trend of reducing taxes that had started under the previous Gary Filmon government, a trend that was well documented by the CCPA Manitoba. That is the under-rated story as to why the province's finances eventually ran into deficit, not overspending as is commonly believed, and not flooding as Selinger would have us believe. And when the chickens came home to roost and the province needed more money, did Greg decide to raise it in a progressive way? No. He raised the PST which not only is a consumption tax that hurts those with lower incomes, but it also broke a promise and angered people so much that they couldn't see the more positive aspects of the NDP record or what it really meant to elect Pallister.
For me, what I will remember most about him is his sutbborn defiance. First of all, any iditot with lhalf a brain would have told you that raising the PST was political suicide, but he pushed ahead anyways. And the actions of Oswald et al were reprehensible, but they were triggered in large part by Greg's intransigence when it was clear that he was losing support within the party. He still ran. During the election, he made the campaign all about himself even when polling said that he was nearly the singular cause of the NDP's drop in popularity. I'm actually surprised that he didn't try to hang onto leadership after the election. Most former leaders in Selinger's position would have stepped down. Even Harper knew after October 2015 that he had worn out his welcome and moved out of the spotlight lest he continue to be a drag on his party's fortunes.
So why is Selinger leaving now? Remember those accusations of harassment at the hand of Stan Struthers? Part of that happened under his watch as leader. Last week, he had a press conference where he said he was sorry but was refusing to step down. I suspect that there was talk about the NDP removing him from Caucus all together, which would explain why he's stepping down at this moment. The real legacy of the Manitoba NDP, I believe is a stubbornly high poverty rate that only started to go down slightly during his term, but not nearly enough. If there is one thing that has hurt the NDP most, it's that whenever the NDP tries to say, "we're for the working men and women," people look at what happened under Greg's watch as Finance Minister and Premier and say, "we've seen how you actually treat poor working people, no thank you."
Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Greg!