The only person to have publicly announced that they were seeking a nomination to run in this spring’s Thompson byelection has withdrawn their candidacy.
Oswald Sawh, a former Thompson city councillor, said in a paid advertisement in the April 6 Thompson Citizen that he had dropped out as a potential candidate as of March 24, nearly two weeks earlier.
Sawh’s ad did not give a specific reason for his withdrawal, apart from a quote that said he realized it “was not my time.”
“I have had incredible support form the residents in the Thompson constituency with a fourfold increase in members signed up by my team over the current membership levels,” Sawh said in his ad, which also thanked the support provided by members of the Thompson NDP constituency association as well as people who bought memberships or helped sell memberships for him. “They were great to work with and are really focused on the needs of our Thompson constituency.”
Sawh runs a property rental business and a consulting firm and is involved with numerous non-profit organizations, including the Royal Canadian Legion, the Thompson Humane Society, and Men Are Part of the Solution, which offers counselling and transitional housing to men and women with substance abuse and intimate partner violence issues.
His withdrawal came less than three weeks after he announced his name as a potential candidate and three days after financial disclosure documents published by Elections Manitoba regarding Premier Heather Stefanson’s successful campaign for leadership of the Progressive Conservative party showed that it had received a $250 contribution from Oswald Sawh.
The April 6 advertisement also announced that Sawh, who retired last year as CEO of Communities Economic Development Fund, has accepted a new job as executive director of the Thompson Neighbourhood Renewal Corporation.
“The TNRC has had a long-term positive impact for Thompson in the area of housing, community safety, youth engagement, economic development, cleanliness and beautification,” Sawh said. “We will be starting a new engagement process to see what the priorities of the TNRC will be for Thompson for the next five years.”
No date has yet been announced for the byelection to fill the seat vacated as a result of former Thompson MLA Danielle’s Adams’s death in December, but it must be held within six months of the seat becoming vacant, which means it should take place by early June at the latest.
