Blackhorse (right) with Dargany in 2017, then party leader and deputy leader, respectively.
The Deputy PM and Diplomacy Secretary, Andrew Blackhorse, has formally presented a leadership challenge to unseat Prime Minister Noa Dargany from the leadership of the Liberal party, following the established bureaucratic procedure. Over the course of the last few days, Blackhorse has collected the sufficient signatures mandated in the party’s statute adopted under his leadership (2015-17).
The Prime Minister has come under fire from her own party ranks after the failure of the New Frontier plan negotiations with the Opposition, and Blackhorse has effectively positioned himself as the alternative. The former leader was once seen as Dargany’s mentor, and last year he voluntarily stepped down from the party’s leadership to allow Dargany to become Prime Minister.
The vote will take place on Sunday (7-10-2018), and the entirety of the party’s membership is entitled to vote. The democratic mechanism for electing the party’s leadership was introduced with the New Valtirian Plan, the manifesto and statute that reformed the old Unity Party into the Liberals, under the progressive leadership of Andrew Blackhorse.
While it is likely that Blackhorse will succeed in his task to become party leader, it is still unclear wether he has the numbers in Parliament to form a government. Most Liberal MPs are nominally in favor of Dargany, and the party’s slim majority will mean the party’s whole bloc has to vote in favor of Blackhorse’s government proposal for it to be confirmed. This means a potential Blackhorse leadership would have to make amends with the pro-Dargany side swiftly after its victory to get unified support.
Should Blackhorse ultimately succeed to become Prime Minister, it would be the first time since the adoption of the present constitution that the constitutional mechanism to change government without electing a new Parliament is used. This system, adopted following the conventions of most parliamentary democracies, was adopted to ensure stability in the Kingdom.
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