After five terms and 18 years in office, West Vancouver-Capilano Liberal MLA Ralph Sultan has announced he won’t be seeking election again.
Sultan, who has won by landslide results in every election since 2001, let his constituency association know last week. Knowing the next election could be as long as two years away, the province’s oldest-ever MLA said age was a factor in the decision.
“Under the circumstances, I started doing some elementary arithmetic. I’m 86 now. I might be 88 at the time of the next election and if I was fortunate enough to be re-elected — because it’s essentially a four and a half year term — I would be 93,” he said. “I thought, ‘You know, Ralph, you’ve been pushing the envelope pretty good but that might just be an envelope too far.’”
Sultan said he fully expects two more years of “hard slogging” as an MLA including constituency time, committee work and “supporting the team in Victoria.”
“That really will not change,” he said.
The riding, which covers much of Dundarave to Upper Lonsdale, has been a safe seat for the party over the decades so Sultan predicted his retirement would trigger a hotly contested nomination race for the B.C. Liberals.
Prior to politics, Sultan was a Harvard professor, an engineer, and chief economist for the Royal Bank of Canada.
In a Tweet acknowledging his departure, Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson praised Sultan. “He sets the standard that we all should strive for as elected officials,” he said.
