Article Added On: December 16, 2004 - over 3 years ago
Title: Aid or exploitation? Ethnic leaders say they must help their countrymen
Author: Suzanne Wilton
Publication: The Calgary Herald
Publication Date: January 01, 2004 - over 4 years ago
Faith Groups: Other
Themes: religion in politics

Abstract: Thanh Nguyen, a Christian pastor and founder of the Forest Lawn Bible College, is known in the Calgary's Vietnamese community as a power broker who can influence how the members of his community vote, Suzanne Wilton of the Calgary Herald writes. The story focuses on the role of ethnic voters in Calgary, and it does not mention how traditional churches in the mainstream society plays a role in elections. East Calgary is known by its ethnic politics where community leaders are sought after by political candidates to organize a bloc vote, writes Wilton, who also goes on to say that recent immigrants of a certain ethnic or cultural background, such as Sikh (**Is Sikh a proper term to indicate one's ethnicity or cultural background?), are more likely to identify with their own cultural group and seek its guidance when it comes to elections.

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Thanh Nguyen risked 19 days aboard a small sailboat crammed with dozens of people escaping the communist regime that killed his father.

He survived that 1983 trip from Vietnam to Hong Kong, arriving penniless at a refugee camp, along with thousands of others forced from their homeland.

One year later, Nguyen, his wife and two children started a new life in Canada and never looked back.

Democracy was a concept as foreign as their adopted homeland.

"I can say freedom and I won't be put in jail," says Nguyen. "I have a voice here."

Today, Nguyen is using that voice to spread the word of God as a Christian pastor in east Calgary, and founder of the Forest Lawn Bible College.

But he also preaches politics and is known in the community as a power broker -- a Vietnamese leader who can influence how people vote.

And he's not alone.

East Calgary is known, if not dominated, by its ethnic politics. It's here, where community leaders are often sought after by political candidates hoping to organize a bloc vote.

According to the 2001 Canada census, one-fifth of Calgary's population is foreign born, with the immigrant population accounting for 21 per cent of residents.

Many settle in east Calgary, where housing is cheaper and there's greater cultural support and concentration of ethnic communities.

But it's also in these areas where accusations of voting irregularities marred this fall's provincial and municipal elections.

As the allegations of fraud continue flying, the role of ethnic politics has also come under the microscope.

Many of the allegations of political chicanery are based in ethnic communities. But members of those communities differ on whether ethnicity played a part.

In the civic Ward 10, where it's alleged attempts were made to rig the vote, almost one-third of residents are immigrants, nearly all from Vietnam. Visible minorities comprise nearly 34 per cent of the ward's total population.

It's alleged that more than 1,200 mail-in ballots were requested by the winning candidate's campaign team, almost exclusively in the names of Vietnamese voters. All were sent to one mailbox rented by Margot Aftergood's husband and campaign manager, David Aftergood, a provincial Tory and supporter of Conservative MLA Hung Pham.

Municipal Affairs Minister Rob Renner on Tuesday announced that the province would "inspect" the election process, but it may never determine what role -- if any -- Pham had in the vote.

Nguyen, who was supposed to testify at the Ward 10 judicial inquiry, sold memberships door-to-door for Pham's nomination.

He says he feels obliged to teach his countrymen about the political process.

Others in the community, however, fear that Vietnamese people, a relatively small group not yet assimilated into Canadian society, are being exploited by their own.

"A lot of (Vietnamese) came to Canada as refugees because they are risking their lives to escape a communist and corrupt regime in the hope of democracy and human rights in a new country," says Anne-Marie Pham, a founding member of the Calgary Vietnamese Youth Group (and no relation to Hung Pham).

"So when . . . Vietnamese people find out their names have been used without their consent, a few things come to their mind -- one is that I risked my life to escape exactly what I'm finding myself into again."

In the Nov. 22 provincial election, there are complaints of voter irregularities in Calgary-McCall, a riding where 37 per cent of the 36,458 people are of an ethnic origin other than Canadian.

It's alleged that two elderly women, assisted by a man because they didn't speak English, voted using a prescription label filled that same day as proof of residency. There are also complaints that one man voted twice using different names, and another woman tried to vote using a fake citizenship card.

At least one Conservative insider is publicly decrying the long-standing practice of organizing the ethnic vote, venturing into dangerous territory by saying immigrants are being used by power-hungry people from their own ethnic communities.

"There is an uneducated amount of ethnics who don't understand the laws, but listen to people they perceive to be important in their communities," says Dale Galbraith, president of the Calgary-McCall PC riding association, who came under fire during the provincial election for implying Sikhs were trying to "hijack" the election.

"I don't believe for one minute people would go in there and do something illegal if they knew the ramifications," adds Galbraith, admitting that political shenanigans are most often associated with his own party's nomination process.

It's a claim rejected by Darshan Kang, a Sikh and the Liberal candidate who lost to Conservative Shiraz Shariff by 245 votes.

"In my election, there was no ethnic politics involved. We are all Canadian," says Kang, adding that many Sikhs supported the PCs.

Experts say a newcomer's view of the political culture here is coloured by experience from their homeland. And no political system is immune to the abuse of power.

For example, immigrants from Vietnam lived under a regime ruled by threats and intimidation. Transparency International, a global counter-corruption watchdog, ranked it as the second most corrupt country in Southeast Asia (after Indonesia).

Others hailing from India, from where many Sikhs come, experienced the world's largest democracy yet one where the U.S. Library of Congress says corruption has not only become a pervasive aspect of politics but also an increasingly important factor in elections there.

"People take politics very seriously (in India) because it affects their lives," says Kang, who immigrated here in 1970.

"That's why they get involved when they come here."

In the provincial riding of Calgary-McCall, 12 per cent of the population is Sikh but people in the community reject the notion of bloc ethnic voting.

Kang denies that Sikh power brokers were employed during election campaigns to lobby for those votes. Such accusations, he says, are racist.

Vick Sekhon, 22, a Canadian-born Sikh, also contradicts Galbraith's claims that the Sikh votes are influenced by ethnicity.

"It doesn't work like that," says Sekhon.

Sekhon is a member of the Conservative constituency board in Calgary Northeast, a federal riding held by Art Hanger.

Four years ago, Hanger fended off four challengers -- all Sikh -- in a controversial nomination contest fraught with accusations of dirty tricks and ethnic politics.

Hanger said at the time that he was operating in a political arena with "powder kegs everywhere."

Were it not for the fractured Sikh vote, Hanger would have easily been overtaken.

"If the whole community came together, I can guarantee there would have been 25,000 votes," says Sekhon.

Sikh politics have traditionally been marked by power brokerage in places such as B.C. and Ontario, where the largest communities flourish and allegations among warring camps are not uncommon.

Experts say that recent immigrants are more likely to identify with their own cultural group and seek its guidance when it comes to elections.

"It's the same as the rest of us, somebody has to lead and give ideas and help people to learn about those who are running in an election," says University of Calgary professor Madeline Kalbach, chairwoman of the Canadian ethnic studies department.

"Leaders have effects, even if you don't think about ethnicity. If you're new to the country, and the city, then you would listen to them."

Cultural connectedness, however, can fade over time.

"Once you start getting second and third generation . . . they become more like the host society," says Kalbach.

And that can lead to fractures within ethnic groups.

For Nguyen, the old ways -- fear of threats and intimidation under a corrupt government system -- were left behind in Vietnam.

"If I was a citizen in Vietnam (and became political), they might put me in jail."