Some political observers are predicting that the BC Liberal government is headed for an implosion, and say the fuse was lit this week with the stalling of the anti-HST petition.

Although Elections BC has confirmed that more than 10 per cent of voters in every riding signed the petition against the harmonized sales tax, the chief electoral officer has said that it won't be passed on to the legislature on until two legal challenges are resolved.

Elections BC has declined to comment.

Simon Fraser University policy analyst Doug McArthur says the petition's stalling could mean trouble for Gordon Campbell's government.

And he says that he's shocked that chief electoral officer Craig James hasn't come forward to justify his decision to hold the petition back.

"No one can tell him he's wrong and therefore he has to reverse his position -- other than a judge," McArthur told CTV News.

"He's avoiding public opinion. He's hiding from it, so that makes me feel that he knows public opinion is going against him."

He added that the downfall of the Liberals could be exactly what former premier Bill Vander Zalm was going for when he started the Fight HST campaign.

"I think he would like to see the Liberals disappear -- that would be his preference -- and that he would like to see a new right wing party come up around clearly defined conservative populist principles," McArthur said.

That's an opinion shared by the man behind one of the legal challenges that is holding back the anti-HST petition.

One of the two legal cases was submitted by a B.C. business coalition led by John Allan, head of the Council of Forest Industries -- the second is from the Fight HST campaign.

Allan says the HST is needed for the province to prosper economically, and that the HST debate is obscuring Vander Zalm's true intentions.

"It seems to me he wants to bring down the government," Allan said.

But even though Vander Zalm is now turning his attention to a campaign to recall Liberal MLAs, he isn't committing to anything beyond that.

With a report from British Columbia's Peter Grainger