I first blogged about the FFWD article entitled "Time to get this party started" back here. In that article, there is another very interesting quote from Wildrose Alliance leader Paul Hinman that the public should know about:
Hinman says that when his party collected its registration signatures in 2002, members informed signatories of the party’s political position before they signed. “That’s what we promoted ourselves on,” he says. “It was, ‘Hey, I’m Paul Hinman. We’re trying to start a new party here in the province…. We think that we need an alternative on the right. Would you mind signing so we can start our party?’”Why is this important? Well, on January 23, 2008, the main mover and shaker behind the formation of the Alberta Alliance, Randy Thorsteinson, made a post on Project Alberta that completely contradicts Hinman's boasts. This is what Thorsteinson said:
You are correct I was the founder of the Alberta Alliance. Most people including Paul Hinman turned me down when I asked for help in getting 6,000 signatures for the party registration. They didn't see the need for a new party, but I did it anyway without them. I didn't hold a grudge towards Paul or anyone else because they only joined after the hard work of registering the party was over.
Fascinating.
Let's go back, and review this again.
In November, 2007, Paul Hinman indicated that he was directly involved in the gathering of signatures when the Alberta Alliance was circulating its registration petition. He even provides an example conversation with a potential signatory in order to demonstrate his involvement.
On January 23, 2008, Randy Thorsteinson writes a post on a discussion board indicating that Paul Hinman had no involvement in gathering signatures, and only got involved in the Alberta Alliance "after the hard work of registering the party was over".
These statements are irreconcilable. Somebody is being less than truthful here.
Either Randy Thorsteinson is discrediting the hard work of Paul Hinman for reasons we can only speculate about, or Paul Hinman is a lazy freeloader who decided to sit back and let others do the grunt work in terms of registering the Alberta Alliance, and has now decided to revise history and take partial credit for the effort.
In either case, the ease with which the Wildrosers make false statements of fact is a bit disconcerting. They are totally unfit for office.
By the way, the thread on Project Alberta that contains the Thorsteinson post quoted herein is now in a members only area of the site. If you are a Project Alberta member, or choose to join the site, you can find a bookmark to the post in my Furl archive (it is currently the second bookmark from the top).
If you would rather not join the site, I can advise that I will be posting a screencap of the damning Thorsteinson post in the next couple of hours.
Update (Feb 08, 2008): I have now obtained a screen capture of the Thorsteinson post:
