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After booting Plecas, Abbotsford South BC Liberals looking to the future

Gladiuk says party members will start looking for new candidate after leader chosen
8511777_web1_web1_Ron-Gladiuk

Abbotsford South BC Liberals are moving on from Darryl Plecas and looking forward to the party’s upcoming leadership race, the riding association president Ron Gladiuk said.

Gladiuk said Plecas’s move to accept the speaker’s seat stung, and had harsh words for what he characterized as “secret negotiations” between Plecas and the NDP. He confirmed, though, that he hadn’t been personally told Plecas wouldn’t take the speaker’s position.

“I’m disappointed for sure,” Gladiuk said. “He didn’t trust me enough to share with me that he was making some backroom deals.”

But Gladiuk said his party is moving on and, after a leader is chosen, will begin the hunt for a new candidate to run as a BC Liberal in the next election, whenever it takes place.

Plecas told The News Wednesday that he is “inclined” to run again for office as an independent. Such a scenario would be a reprisal of the 2013 Abbotsford South election, when Plecas faced off with, and defeated, an incumbent MLA – John van Dongen – who had left the BC Liberals to sit first as a BC Conservative, then as an independent.