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Ruffled-feathered residents dress up as chickens to protest Vernon-Lumby candidates skipping forums

'We're in a fowl mood'

A trio of North Okanagan voters with ruffled feathers protested the lack of candidate attendance at the majority of all-candidates forums so far.

A trio dressed up as chickens on Saturday, before the Vernon-Lumby all-candidate forum began, to protest the turnout at prior forums. In a news release sent before the protest, the “pro-democracy chickens” said they were concerned over MLA-hopefuls not showing up to share their views with voters.

“If our candidates want to be ‘leaders of the flock’, they need to answer all of the questions that are important to us, their potential cluck-stituents!” Protesters said in an email.

“If they are not available to us now, how can we count on them being available to us as our MLAs?”

Saturday's all-candidate forum was the first event all four Vernon-Lumby candidates attended. So far, three forums have been held for Vernon-Lumby candidates, attendance has been:

Oct. 1 student forum:

  • Harwinder Sandhu – NDP
  • Kevin Acton – Independent

Oct. 3 environmental forum:

  • Harwinder Sandhu – NDP

Oct. 5 forum:

  • Harwinder Sandhu – NDP
  • Kevin Acton – Independent
  • Dennis Giesbrecht – BC Conservative
  • Robert Johnson – Libertarian

The chickens held signs drawing attention to candidates not showing up, the importance of informed voters, and how “economic, social, environmental issues are all connected.”

While Saturday’s forum was only open to Vernon-Lumby candidates, the two prior events have included Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream candidates, who also have had low attendance prompting protestors to say: “We’re in a fowl mood. All forums matter.”

Both the Oct. 1 and 3 forums were attended by Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream NDP candidate Anna Warick-Sears and Independent Kevin Kraft, Green Party candidate Andrew Rose and Conservative Tara Armstrong did not attend either event.

“This is not a yolk, folks! It is a clucking shame that we could only scratch up 3 to 4 of our 8 candidates,” reads an email from protestors.

“Any political party that does not encourage their candidates to show up is playing chicken with the public.”



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