Due diligence and undue demands

The new developments in the Dwain Lingenfelter membership list controversy just keep on coming, with two more noteworthy happenings this afternoon.

First, the Saskatchewan NDP has announced an independent investigation into exactly what happened:

The party has arranged to have Swift Current lawyer Robert Hale look into how it happened and how it can be prevented in the future.

Hale is a New Democrat who ran for the party against Brad Wall in the 2007 election but has had no role in any of the leadership campaigns...

"We just need to do this for Mr. Lingenfelter; we need to do it for Ms. Higgins; we need to do it for Mr. Pedersen; and we need to do it for Ryan Meili," Hale said.

"But mainly, we need to do it for the membership of the New Democratic Party. We need people to feel satisfied that the leadership content committee has done appropriate due diligence on this when they make their decision of what is exactly going to take place."

The party hopes Hale will have his work done as early as next week. It's not yet known whether Hales's (sic) findings will be made public, McDonald said.

Now, I wouldn't put too much stock in any question as to whether or not Hale's findings will in fact be made public.

For today, the NDP's priority was likely to set the investigation in motion without making any final decisions as to how its results would be handled. But it's hard to see who would stand to benefit in any way from hiding the outcome of a review which we know to be taking place. And indeed the Lingenfelter campaign might suffer more than anybody if the investigation were to stay under wraps, as there seem to be plenty of voices assuming the worst until something else is shown to be true.

And unfortunately, one of the leadership candidates has apparently joined that group, as Yens Pedersen is publicly calling for Lingenfelter to drop out of the leadership race:

Dwain Lingenfelter should pull out of the Saskatchewan NDP leadership race for the good of the party after his campaign signed up more than 1,000 new party members without their desire, consent or knowledge, said leadership candidate Yens Pedersen on Tuesday.
...
Pedersen, a Regina lawyer and former party president, said he welcomed the review by Hale but said Lingenfelter should take responsibility and step down.

“In my view, this has always been the party of integrity and morality. And in my view, for the party to maintain its reputation, if Dwain really believes in the objectives and ideals and priorities of this party, then I think for the good of the party he should step down,” said Pedersen, who added he is not accusing Lingenfelter of personal responsibility.

It's particularly striking that Pedersen apparently issued his statement even after he heard about the Hale investigation - which would seem to offer reason to hold back on any calls for immediate action until after the review is completed.

But even leaving that aside, one would expect the actual leadership candidates to take a more measured stance rather than making what would seem to be an extreme demand. And judging from the Lingenfelter camp's testy response, Pedersen's statement may have been the first in the race to create bad blood between the candidates which might outlast the leadership race itself - which can't do much good for any of the candidates' interests in the long run.

Update: The Pedersen campaign advises that Yens' call for Lingenfelter to step down came before he found out about the Hale investigation, which puts it in a somewhat different light as an initial position. I'd presumed otherwise based on the Lingenfelter campaign's response which seemed to imply that the party's review process had been made known to the candidates beforehand - but my apologies to Yens for the error.