The Conservative candidate was an immigration lawyer of Indian and European descent who spoke several languages, including Tamil, Hindi and Farsi.
Anyone can play that game. It could be said that the Conservative candidate is a politician's assistant, and is a 'consultant' and a 'small-businessperson'. (She is a not a lawyer.) It could also be said that the Liberal candidate heads a business lobby group and was politician's assistant (to the previous MP no less!). Meanwhile, it could be said that the NDP candidate is a union organizer and is employed by a union and volunteers in the local community and campaigned straight and put her career on the line agaisnt all odds for two years.
See? Easy...
(Actually, I thought Rana was pretty good. Gallyot? Yikes.)
Again, nearby an IT guy with the most whitebread name ever took the NDP party from a distant third to first. In a riding that is 55 percent white. Is that an affront to diversity? Or is that accuraterly reflecting the population?
See how easy that is to cast aspersions on 'qualifications"...?
Easy, again.
Is there a population that votes based on ethnicity? I'm sure there is - just liek others vote on leader, language, class, left-right, lawn sign colour, friendliness, birth location, etc.
But to put anyone's win/loss down solely to ethnic politics is absurd. Particularly in this case, considering an NDP win wasn't an isolated occurrence in the city, or even in Scarborough itself. So you don't have to be South Asian (or any ethnicity) to see that the people making the 'you only won 'cos of the ethnic vote' argument always always come down to partisan feelings.