Hey, Alf Apps, Here's Another Letter Calling for Your Resignation

The delusional Apps maintains only 8 or 10 people have called for his resignation. Well, I know different. So does he. But the truth never really mattered to Alf Apps.

Here's one from The Sun today

Dunn: Apps dooms Grits The inside story of the destruction of the Liberal Party
By Mark Dunn ,Parliamentary Bureau
First posted: Tuesday, May 17, 2011 2:00:26 EDT AM

The Liberal Party of Canada has an App for failure.


Alfred Apps, party president, backroom boy and lightning rod for discontent among the Grit flock who have seen their once proud institution reduced to rubble.


His recruit, Michael Ignatieff, had no choice but to quit after the carnage earlier this month. But Apps, who takes no blame for the historic collapse and the heap of Liberal corpses at his feet, was one of the architects of the events that ended with the May 2 drubbing. And the party may never recover with him at the helm.


Let’s start with some perspective. Between 2006 and 2009, I was heavily involved in providing communications advice to the Liberal Opposition.


I heard things, I saw things. And it wasn’t pretty. I was in the office of Bill Graham, interim Opposition leader when Stephane Dion beat Michael Ignatieff for the leadership in 2006. The grassroots of the party rejected Ignatieff at the Montreal convention.


It was a stunning upset, and the start of nasty backroom games to undermine Dion, led by the gang that went to Harvard to convince Ignatieff to return to Canada to lead the party in the first place.


Ignatieff was their messiah. To others, he was an English version of Dion.


For two years, Dion’s leadership was under constant threat. He was pressured to name Ignatieff as deputy leader, a fatal mistake he was warned to avoid — but didn’t — which left the rival for his job gunning for him from the office next door and partisan soldiers lurking in the open reporting every move back to the Toronto generals.


I watched with fascination the bullying, the backstabbing, the threats and the neverending plotting.


Most disturbing were the bloated egos, the power-hungry who put themselves before their party. It was already on life support after the Chretien-Martin feud, but these zealots wanted Dion gone even if it meant further destruction of an institution already in a death spiral.


The price they paid was 17 seats zapped after the 2008 election, the failed coalition Hail Mary.


And finally the coup to turf Dion and install Ignatieff. The Toronto gang moved in and Apps was made president at the urging of the aloof professor. The road to this month’s historic calamity was paved.


Which brings us back to the new reality: The Liberal party under Alf Apps is a walking corpse.


But he is deaf to calls to leave. Blind to gestures pointing at the door.


And this is why the Liberal party is doomed.


If the dwindling grassroots don’t rise up and rid themselves of those who were part of the broader team that orchestrated the May 2 drubbing, then the Liberals deserve to wallow in the wilderness for years, generations and perhaps even longer.


You need leaders who can reach out — those who roll up their sleeves and understand the undertaking that is required to rebuild, to renew, to raise money, to unite.


The grassroots of the party has been taken for fools for too long while the elitists make rules on the fly, and mine loopholes in the party’s Constitution to suit themselves.


The party’s Council of Presidents holds a teleconference call Wednesday.


This should be the last call for Apps.