In a well-timed press release, Premier Christy Clark laments not having had the opportunity to debate her opponent, David Eby, before Wednesday’s by-election in the Vancouver-West Point Grey riding, while simultaneously feigning alarm around Eby’s “extreme positions and outrageous statements.”

Clark’s comments hit the CBC airwaves on the morning of Tuesday, May 10th, 2011.

Election Date: Wednesday, May 11th, 2011.

Christy Clark is flooding the local media today with a highly charged campaign designed to caution Vancouver-West Point Grey residents against Eby’s “fringe” ideas after having distanced herself from formally debating the NDP intellectual throughout the entire political race, citing a variety of excuses ranging from time constraints to her belief that “residents are happy she’s taking all of her campaign time to speak directly to them.”

Clark’s choosing to take the rhetorical route over the public hashing out of rival political platforms is really no surprise, because when spottily educated political charmers square off against adjunct professors of law, things can go south very quickly.

But as Clark crows with much confidence that Eby’s ideas do not represent what the people in the Vancouver-West Point Grey riding want, what becomes clearer still is that as this race has unexpectedly heated up, Clark has been forced to take notice of an opponent, hunker down in an all-out effort to show the good people of Vancouver-West Point Grey just what she is made of, and then of course, launch a stiff ol’ fashioned smear campaign.

By cherry-picking policy arguments that David Eby made as a human rights lawyer and executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, and then tossing them out to the masses with no hint of context or further explanation, Clark is hoping that a lazy Vancouver-West Point Grey crowd will simply take her at her word, and vote in her favour. Unfortunately, Clark is running in a very well educated riding, where more than 68 per cent of residents aged 25 to 64 have some form of university certificate, diploma or degree according to 2006 census data. Indeed, almost 17 per cent are educated to the master’s level, compared to Clark, who possesses neither a bachelor’s degree, nor a community college diploma. Perhaps slam tactics were her only option, who knows? But I predict that her thinly veiled attack campaign will not sit well with a citizenry not accustomed to being spoon-fed a sequence of inflammatory words without checking out the nooks and crannies of the context.

And this is what they’ll find:

David Eby Supports Polygamy

Charges that David Eby is a polygamy sympathizer are borne out of a 2010 article for 24 Hours Daily Newspaper in which Eby declared: “We don’t have to endorse Bountiful (a B.C. polygamist community) to believe enforcing a Victorian morality code through the threat of arrest and jail is wrong. Most importantly, we don’t need the criminal polygamy law to fix the problems alleged at Bountiful.”

Once Christy Clark and the Liberal party were finished with Eby’s sentiments on Civil Liberties, the new message was: “David Eby is in favour of polygamy”. Short. Not so sweet, and at the end of the day, not a Provincial issue anyway, but a Federal one. Nonetheless, with this newly spun dictum in hand, Clark was on her way to taking the black arts of the political trade to a newer, more concentrated level: the provincial electoral district.

David Eby Supports Pornography

A great way to raise the ire of a residential community is to alert parents to the porno freak in their midst. In Eby’s case, Clark simply delivers the word “pornography” over the airwaves on the day before elections commence, and she lets it hang in all of its unseemliness.

Does anyone remember B.C. Ferries’ decision to censor the material that its passengers can view on their internet? Because that’s what this brouhaha is all about. Eby has expressed concern around B.C. Ferries’ having implemented a stringent screening software that blocks information about sexual health and reproduction, pointing out that this is a form of censorship.

Meanwhile, the same political party that espouses a “belief in the principles of universal public access to health care and education” turns this violation of their very own platform into: “David Eby is in favour of people viewing porn while traveling on B.C. Ferries.”

David Eby Supports Legalization of Drugs

Finally, and probably most difficult to reconcile with one’s common sense, is Christy Clark’s assertion that David Eby supports the legalization of hard-core drugs. Clark is referring to Insite, North America’s first legally supervised injection site that strives to decrease the adverse health, social, and economic consequences of drug use without requiring abstinence from drug use. Once again, Clark is confusing Provincial jurisdictions with Federal Laws, but that aside, David Eby does not apologize for his view that drug addiction should be treated as a health issue and not a criminal issue – plain and simple.

Ironically, as Christy Clark can merely talk about restoring public trust, David Eby, Executive Director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, adjunct professor of law at the University of British Columbia, President of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, Research Associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and, winner of the B.C. Human Rights Coalition and U.N. Association in Canada’s Renate Shearer Award for his contributions to the human rights field locally, personifies these very principles.

Here’s how I see it: when a well educated political candidate who prioritizes human rights and civil liberties is painted by an under-educated sitting Premier as “extreme” and “outrageous,” we may want to remind ourselves that insecurities can often breed contempt. It’s what pits the threatened against the accomplished.

Time will reveal all and I’m no soothsayer, but I predict we’ve only seen the beginnings of a politician with an agenda bent on power-mongering, disrespect and disparagement of people and causes that do not align with big business for big dollars and, the downright economic devolution of a province with a lot to lose.