The members of Canada's New Democrat Party voted on Sunday to oust their leader, Thomas Mulcair. The party vote was held six months after it suffered a resounding defeat in a general election it had initially been favored to win.
According to CBC NEWS, to back the rejection of Thomas Mulcair's time as a leader of the federal NDP, the delegates gathered in Edmonton for the party's convention. The New Democrat Party favors the launching of a new leadership race on Sunday.
The delegates vote resulted 52 percent to 48 percent to proceed with the leadership election. The New Democrats voted to hold a leadership convention in two years.
The next Canadian election is not expected until 2019. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberals begun last year's election campaign in third place in the opinion polls. Trudeau's Liberals won a parliamentary majority in the October vote.
The NDP's constitution sets that Mulcair needed a simple majority to drive back a leadership vote. He said that he would consider a higher threshold of 70 percent. But Sunday's result fell short of either the target.
Mulcair's party lost more than half its seats and grabbed the third place in last year's election. In his speech prior to the leadership vote, Mulcair took responsibility for the defeat. But he urged his party members to keep standing with him.
Mulcair had been the frontrunner in opinion polls when the election campaign started. His party, which is the second most seats in the House of Commons, had been the official opposition to the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. However, the center-left Liberals rode a late surge to a majority victory under the charismatic leadership of Trudeau, the son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, as noted by Reuters.
Dailymail UK reported that during the campaign, Mulcair vowed to balance the budget in a bid to reinforce the party's economic credentials. But the stand sets against a lot of grassroots supporters who wanted change after nearly a decade of Conservative strictness.
The Canadian Prime Minister's Liberals gained advantage over the New Democrats on the left, supporting deficit spending to urge the wavering economy. Mulcair became the NDP leader in 2012 seven months after the death of Jack Layton.
Layton led the party to a federal election performance in 2011. Mulcair stated on Sunday that he would remain as the member of the parliament for his Montreal electoral district.
Meanwhile, Mulcair's leadership is still in question. Moreover, ahead of the convention, it had been speculated that a vote of 70 percent against the new leadership election would have been enough to sustain Mulcair's hold on the party.
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