Corpus – When Prime Minister Mark Kindle announced he was resigning following a drubbing in January’s general election, no-one expected it would be May before the Sanctarian Conservative Party would have found themselves a new leader. Once Kate Cruz, Kindle’s biggest critic and cabinet foe, announced she was running to succeed Kindle as the SCP’s leader, people thought that was it; there’d be no contest. Cruz was popular in the party, well-liked by her peers (even if not necessarily by the voters – she just managed to secure her seat), and, crucially, she was tough. Kindle, who said his resignation date would be effective on the choosing of his replacement, did so because he too expected election by acclamation. But then in stepped Andrew Silk.
Silk, a former Deputy Prime Minister, has long harboured leadership ambitions. Indeed, he was Kindle’s challenger in the previous SCP leadership election. Popular amongst hardline conservatives in the party, Silk felt the SCP moved too far to the centre in this past general election campaign. And he wasn’t going to let Cruz, who despite being a vocal critic of Kindle was actually on his wing of the party, just waltz away with the leadership. Not on his watch. And what followed was four months of public, bitter spats about the future of the SCP. The party has been torn apart and Kindle, who today finally gets to step down as leader after the eventual leadership election, said as much before his successor was announced, “whoever wins today has the tough job of putting this party back together. We were broken after a bruising general election, but the fights we have seen to get to lead this party have split us right down the middle. Whoever wins today, by their actions during their campaigns, do not deserve to lead this party – but they now have an obligation to be better, to do better, and to heal the rifts they caused.”
Kate Cruz was announced as the victor, and the first female leader of the Sanctarian Conservative Party, just after 3pm today. Belying the vicious campaigning the party had seen over the past weeks, it was a landslide victory. 70% voted in favour. In a way, all the jabs, the ad hominem remarks, the “choose your side” belittling remarks to the voters, it was all for nought.
In her victory speech, Cruz did thank Kindle for his service, and did promise to heal the rifts. People speculated that Silk ran to ensure he was in any frontbench that Cruz put together, and that it was his far-right populist supporters that made the campaign the way it was. When asked, Cruz declined to commit to putting Silk in her frontbench. But deep down she probably knows that she’ll have to have people from that wing of the party if it’s to truly come together and not split apart.
GWEN COPLEY, Political Correspondent
