Liberal Leadership Convention

The Liberals have been busy with choosing a new leader for themselves in last few months. There was no one as the head of the party after they were defeated by the Conservatives and Martin stepped down. It's being said that the Liberals has given almost everything to this country in last three decades including the Charter of Rights (that's the only thing I can recal and I thing is a very important asset) and all of a sudden the Conservatives took over!
Thus the Liberals tried to elect (yes elect!) a new strong leader who's able to defeat Harper. There were a few candidates of course and only one of them was known to me: Michael Ignatieff. He made a few comments during Israel-Hizbollah conflict a few months ago which was not wise, in my view. He once said that bombing a small village in southern Lebanon, where Israel claims that's where Hizbullah guerilla used to hide and ambush Israeli troops, was a war crime. That made him a bad guy in Jewish community of Canada and even a party member attacked him verbally. Then a few days after that he tried to rebuild trust with Jewish people and said he would travel to Israel but the contradiction diminished his attributes as a good party member and futuer leader and almost no one bought it.
When I saw him as a leadership candidate last week I was surprised and got more surprised when there was no sign of people like John Manley and Blinda Stronach and few others. But these are none an issue. The problem I saw here is if the Liberals ultimate intention is defeating the Conservatives and regain the reign, then why don't they consume all of their effort and energy on fighting with them (The Conservatives) instead of having internal clash for their leadership?!
They simply are able to have an election by their for example top 5 mebers (Let's call them leadership board of the party) and chose the person they believe is able to run their party toward a triumphal fight with the Conservatives. I don't know why that is not the way how the leadership convention works here. May be because it's a convention!
Anyhow Ignatieff was leading the leadership election with almost 29% of the votes in the first, I would say, round. Then all of a sudden a French-Canadian guy, with a strong accent and poor English won the leadership. It's said that Stephane Dion (I don't think there's any relationship between him and Celine Dion. The only thing in commen that I've seen so far is their rather poor English and ridiculous accent! Sorry. No offence to Celine! She's great. I'll write about her a little later) has had a kind of deal with one of the other candidates, Gerard Kennedy and that made him able to step up from the forth seat to the top and winning the election. We'll wait and see how he does and how he defeats Harper.
(Photo: The newly elected Libral part leader, Stephen Dion, is seen here with other candidates after his victory. He's the second from right)