Abdullah Almalki, a key figure in the Maher Arar affair, has apparently been released from prison in Syria.
Almalki had been in prison for almost two years. According to his lawyer, he was released a week ago, but has not gotten out of Damascus yet–his parents flew there to meet him. His lawyer doesn’t want to say very much, and has asked the Canadian government not to comment, until they are safely out of Syria.
Oh, and in other news–Arar’s wife, Monia Mazigh, is running for Parliament. She’s running for the NDP nomination. Perhaps someone from Canada can tell us more about the NDP–they finished fourth in her district last time, so she’s quite unlikely to win.
(If lightning struck and she did win, would she be the first Muslim woman elected to the legislature of a North American or European country? Or to a western country where Muslims are a minority?)
The NDP are the most left-wing of Canada’s political parties, falling firmly into the social democratic/socialist end of the political spectrum. They don’t let the socialists out in public as much these days, though.
For the last decade, they’d been in pretty serious decline, as had the other opposition parties. Things had reached the point where the Liberals were hitting an absolute majority in terms of voter support, which is pretty impressive in a four-party system. However, the Liberals have recently been badly damaged by a lengthy series of corruption scandals, so all the opposition parties are seeing a surge right now, with an election expected later this year.
The NDP Leader, Jack Layton, has been pursuing a number of candidates with a high media profile to attempt to get the NDP back into the spotlight. Mazigh is one of these, as her candidacy gets the NDP onto the national news. The riding is expected to be won by the Liberal candidate, David McGuinty (the brother of the Premier of Ontario) but an upset is certainly possible. However, the riding is more likely to go Conservative if McGuinty loses.
I would add a couple of things to Kevin’s comments.
The current crop of Liberal scandals have strongly boosted the Conservatives nationally and the Bloc (that oxymoronic federal-seperatist party) in Quebec but the NDP have not seen a significant rise in support.
A March 8th poll shows the Liberals with 38%, the Conservatives at 26%, the NDP at 17%, the Bloc at 12%, and the Greens at 4%.
Given that 100% of the Bloc’s support is in Quebec, they seem poised to take (back) a significant number seats there from the Liberals.
The NDP’s support is spread thin across the country, likely leaving them with few seats.
By the way, Monia Mazigh is trying for the nomination in a riding where she doesn’t live. She says she got such good support from her own (Liberal) MP that she didn’t want to run against him.
Hey Yukoner, when’s Penikett coming back to power? 😉
Just to add to the stuff above, the NDP is the most leftwing of the most popular political parties. I belive that the CPC M/L is so far to its left that they’ve wrapped back around to the extreme right. Similarily, other Trotskyist and Marxist fringe parties are way out there. The NDP is pretty firmly social democratic.
Lastly, the NDP is both a federal party and an provincial one. Latest popularity polls in BC have the provincial NDP at a higher level than the provincial Liberals (who aren’t very) for the first time in years.
Stu is technically correct. There are at least three registered parties to the left of the NDP (two communist and the Greens) but none of those actually hold seats in Parliament, while the NDP does.
Also, as a note, all of the major federal parties either have provincial wings or are so closely affiliated with a provincial party that they might as well be a single organization.
Yukoner and I were only talking about the popularity of the parties nationwide. Provincially, there’s a lot of variation, and it’s not unusual for people to vote for different parties at the federal and provincial levels.
Thanks for the crash course. I share the usual American ignorance about other countries’ politics–I learned a fair bit about England last year during my “if we’re going to this war, I’ll pretend Tony Blair is leading us into it so I can sleep at night” phase.
What’s the fourth major party?
I share the usual American ignorance about other countries’ politics–I learned a fair bit about England last year during my “if we’re going to this war, I’ll pretend Tony Blair is leading us into it so I can sleep at night” phase.
What’s the fourth major party?
The top four are Liberals, Conservatives, New Democrats (NDP), Bloc Quebecois. Conservatives are a result of the recent merger of the eastern Tories (Progressive Conservative) with the western Alliance (formerly Reform).
Most of what I know about Canadian politics is from the years (1994-1999) when CBC was on our ‘big dish’, and when we would regularly spend a few weeks in the summer in Ontario.
One way to follow along now is via small satellite TV; the NewsWorld International channel (366 on DirecTV)is a CBC product that includes ‘The National’ news show.
Thanks so much for staying on the Arar story. I quit checking in at OW when I thought you had left the blog, and returned via a mention at Jim Henley’s Unqualified Offerings.
[I don’t know that this is a spambot, but better safe than sorry.]