People's Alliance flipflops on closed meeting

The upstart People's Alliance of New Brunswick will open its first policy conference to the media, backtracking on its earlier plan to keep the discussions closed.

The party, which was spawned partly out of anger at how the Liberal government hatched the botched NB Power deal in secret, only reversed its decision to hold its policy meeting behind closed doors after the issue surfaced in public.

When the policy convention starts on Friday in Oromocto, People's Alliance Leader Kris Austin said the doors will be open.

"People misinterpreted our intentions to say that we're trying to hide something. That is not the case," Austin said.

"We didn't realize that it was going to be as big of a kerfuffle as we thought.  So we said we got nothing to hide, let's open the doors."

The Alliance became New Brunswick's fifth registered party on June 9.

It is planning to field candidates in roughly half of the province's 55 ridings in the Sept. 27 election.

Free votes

A fundamental party principle is to give MLAs the right to vote freely inside the legislative assembly, but it does not have a broader set of policy statements.

So party members will gather in Oromocto to discuss and vote on a set of policies.

When the meetings were to held behind closed doors with a media availability scheduled only after the conference, it led to speculation about why the party was holding the discussion in secret.

Progressive Conservative MLA Bruce Fitch said he's not surprised to see the rival party flipflop.

"This is the trouble with a new party. They're making things up on the fly, making the rules up as they go," Fitch said.

A New Brunswick political observer also credited the sudden bactracking to the fact the party is in its infancy.

Don Desserud, a political scientist at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John, said these types of mistakes are not unusual for political parties that are just getting off the ground and not accustomed to the spotlight.

"They tend to be a little nervous, if not a little shy about what they're doing. The problem is eventually what you want most is that you're an inclusive party, an open party," Desserud said of new political parties.