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So a funny thing happened on the march to the New Jerusalem today.

Tom Mulcair and Olivia Chow held a news conference announcing that Chow was going to be the NDP candidate federally in the new riding of Spadina-Fort York and, guess what? She was, then, the candidate!

That is right, Olivia Chow is now -- without any pretense at a democratic nomination process -- the official candidate for the party in the riding.

We know this as she is already listed as such on the party website:

On CBC Radio this was described as an "official acclimation."

What it is is a de facto appointment.

The NDP and its partisans have long prided themselves on their allegedly open and fair nomination process.

This has been, for many years, actually a total joke. The party regularly disallows potential candidates in advance of them even running for a nomination, terminates candidacies like it did with the democratically nominated leader of the Socialist Caucus Barry Weisleder, and then spies on candidates to ensure compliance with party line as they did with the fake Facebook persona Fred Checkers!

But they at least usually went through the pretense of a nomination meeting.

Not this time.

Likely they want to get on with it quickly.

Perhaps they saw Trudeau's humiliation a few short days ago with Eve Adams and wanted to make absolutely sure -- though it is very hard to see who could have possibly defeated Chow even in a totally democratic nomination fight.

But now, no worries. There will not be one.

Whether Chow is the best candidate to take on Vaughan or not is not the point -- we can now "officially" put to rest the notion that the NDP always honours the democratic will of the membership and does not appoint candidates.

Because that is clearly not the case.

Update: After the publication of this piece, on the afternoon of July 30, 2015, the Spadina-Fort York NDP announced a nomination meeting for the riding. The details can be found on their Facebook page.

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