Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Councillor Sholdra says she has been threatened and slandered!

At the April 30, 2007 Oshawa City Council meeting when the general vote was adopted, Councillor Sholdra accused me "according, she says, to her "legal advice" of "threatening and slandering her both verbally and in writing.



I believe that these unsubstantiated, ridiculous, and juvenile comments were made over the public airwaves to undermine my credibility and I believe that we should expect more responsible behavior of our public officials.

You be the judge!

From: Bill Longworth (bill_longworth@hotmail.com)
Sent:April 16, 2007 10:26:44 AM
To: mshouldra (msholdra@oshawa.ca)

Hi Maryanne...You will be interested in the following excerpt from a recent oshawaspeaks.ca post.

"Councillor Maryanne Sholdra says she believes that ward voting is best. But she wants to take it away from everyone including our many residents whose ancestors, including Maryanne’s, came from Eastern Europe for the freedoms characterized by the “real” vote where people have a “real” say in determining their political leaders and their political destiny. Maryanne has always been a strong supporter of the ethnic community and its values, even chairing Oshawa’s “great” Folk Arts Council for many years. Why is she now turning her back on the Eastern European community and taking away their meaningful vote that they came here to cherish?"

Shame Maryanne!

I'm sure that the ethnic communities you strongly supported for many years will feel "let down" and "disappointed" at your votes to remove ward voting, the system that ensures them a "real voice" at the polls. Their ancestors, and yours, in the old country had enough of feeling powerless to choose their political leaders. You know that is a key reason why they came here...and why they've continued to be so interested in getting politically involved over the years.

Why not change your vote in recognition of the extremely flawed plebiscite process put in place by the last council. You know that democracy cannot function without an informed public. You also know that the kind of "trick" question (re funding the partnership grant for VOTES) that stumped and confused some councillors at the last council meeting was the same kind of question that confused the public voting on the plebiscite question.

Your vote for the plebiscite result is not at all upholding the public will...but is supporting a flawed process that is not democratic at all.
If you changed your vote, I would like to put you down in my site as one of the "stars" upholding and "saving" democracy in Oshawa in future posts.

Bill Longworth,
Founder & Chair of VOTES (Vote to Eliminate Self Serving Politicians)
www.oshawaspeaks.ca
I believe that the following email sent to Councillor Sholdra is the one that she says threatened and slandered her!

As a courtesy, I was informing Councillor Sholdra that I had initiated a new FACEBOOK SITE aimed at the Oshawa multicultural communities and that I was going to use the site to inform this community that she was voting to take away their local ward politician thus making city politicians less accountable to the people.

An internet site of interest to you
From: Bill Longworth (bill_longworth@hotmail.com)
Sent:April 28, 2007 3:07:46 PM
To: mshouldra (msholdra@oshawa.ca)

Hi Maryanne...just started this new site for members of Oshawa's multicultural community and thought you might be interested in checking it out. Let Joe and Nester know also as they will get some face time in this site as well.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2321057994

You might want to change your vote to reject the general vote so that this information does not spread too broadly.

As this site grows, i will be able to send a message to every member's email with one click of a button. We will work on promoting this site among the Oshawa multicultural community and I think Fiesta Week would be a great week to start...don't you?

Facebook is designed so that once it gets loose in a community, it spreads like wildfire as it is so easy for readers to sign up all of the contacts in their address books.

If you change your vote, you will save me the trouble of working on this site and you the loss of support.

Isn't the internet great?

Bill Longworth,
Founder & Chair of VOTES (Vote to Eliminate Self Serving Politicians)
www.oshawaspeaks.ca
The preamble to the FACEBOOK entry is...

Oshawa Councillor, Maryanne Sholdra is voting to take guaranteed local area political representation from Oshawa's many communities. This will mean that the south end of Oshawa will likely have no residents on council but it will also mean that no matter where you live, you will have no city council politician responsible to you and your neighbours. Councillor Sholdra is failing to protect the "real" vote that many ancestors of Oshawa's multicultural communities came here to have. Her vote is eroding democracy in the City of Oshawa.
Democracy requires an informed public. When we want to inform the public about the votes of Councillor Sholdra, she calls it threatening and slander...isn't it amazing that she doesn't want her supporters to know about her vote on this issue.

I wonder why!

Certainly any politician would want voters to know of their votes if they thought the vote reflected the view of the majority of their constituents!

Maybe Councillor Sholdra feels that her vote to take away local representation to protect the seat of incumbent politicians would not be popular with her supporters, many of whose ancestors migrated here for a freer, more open and democratic government.

No comments: