Barry Coulter
One of the applicants for Kootenay East B.C. Liberal candidacy has found his application has been quashed.
Terry Segarty has been informed by the B.C. Liberal Party that he was no longer a candidate for the nomination.
"They phoned me late last week, Thursday or Friday," Segarty told the Townsman. "I told them I needed a formal notice. He was very apologetic — I know the guy that called me — and I asked him what the reason was; he said 'I can't give you the reason.'"
"So that's sort of where it's at. I haven't got formal notification yet, but the ballots are out ... and there are only two names on there."
Segarty, who was very upset by the news, said he's never heard of this kind of rejection of application before — "but then again I've never gone through this kind of application process before either. Generally it's done at the constituency level. I don't know what input the Riding Association has had with the process."
Segarty said he had not yet contacted John Zimmer, President of the Riding Association, to see if they'd had any input.
However, Segarty says it has to do with his being linked to the so-called "Top Hat" scandal, in 1985, in which which Bob McLelland, a cabinet minister in the Social Credit government, was alleged to have contacted an escort service that was under surveillance by police. Segarty was also subpoened in the case, but his subpoena was quashed. A book by B.C. political columnist Paul Willcocks details that affair, and also says Segarty was unfairly maligned because of it.
"It's something that's been out there in the community a long, long time — it was used during the last nominating period (2001) by persons associated with the campaign, and now it's surfaced again," Segarty said.
"It was insulting that the question of character would have been brought up."
Segarty was MLA for what was then known as the riding of Kootenay, from 1979 to 1986 as a Social Credit member.