On that day, thanks in large part to Harper, Preston Manning and a group of people known as the Reform Party, the Progressive Conservative Party that Mulroney had led to two majority governments was reduced to just two seats in Parliament. Reform won 52 seats, including Harper's in Calgary West and the Liberals under Jean Chretien were swept to majority rule with 41% of the popular vote.
Holy crap! There's more distortions of reality in that one paragraph than the best tirades that holocaust deniers like Ernst Zundel can come up with.
Crediting the near annihilation of the PC's under Kim Campbell, the rise of the Reform party in Western Canada all to Stephen Harper is more than something of a stretch.
The PCs fumbled that election badly - whether it was Kim Campbell saying that an election is no place to talk about issues or whoever was brain dead enough to authorize the "Jean Chretien looks wierd" ads.
Harper might have been one of the backroom policy wonks in the Reform party at the time - I honestly don't remember, nor do I much care. To me it's irrelevant. The post-Mulroney era PC's were doomed by a legacy of glib dishonesty that had been led by the ever so slick "Chin" himself. A PC's word by then was associated with just a wee bit too much blarney. Campbell's missteps merely sealed their fate.
The big Conservative tent -- with its share of battle scars and mended seams -- is pretty sturdy as long as nobody kicks out the poles of mutual support and respect that hold the whole thing up.
By calling a public inquiry into the Mulroney affair -- something Mulroney says he welcomes in order to clear his name -- and forbidding his Conservative caucus from having any contact with Mulroney, Harper is doing the right thing with potentially damaging results to the tent.
The big question in this whole affair is, will this scandal harm Harper and his party or will the mud being flung in this 14-year-old story stick as much to those doing the throwing?
What makes this whole, rotting, aged mess with Mulroney and Schreiber relevant to Harper is simple - far too many Mulroney era advisors hold senior posts in the Harper government, and Harper himself is known to rely on Mulroney's counsel. Which, in all respects, makes Mulroney something of a "puppet master" to Harper. Harper owns this almost as much as Mulroney himself does - especially when Harper ran on a platform of being "accountable".
3 comments:
One of two things will result in this latest pile of refuse, either Mulroney will be found not 'guilty' again and sues for more money from the Feds (gotta fatten up that account since all his US dollars are losing ground in the world market) or the investigation will find insufficient evidence to charge Mulroney and he will (again) sue for more money. And to sweeten the pot any 'evidence' found will point to Schreiber who will then lose his fight again extradition and the Con$ will send him back to Germany to face trial, and since he's going to a democratic country and isn't facing the death penalty why should anyone care? Harper's associations with the former PCs will no longer be so easily haunted by the AirBus affair, Mulroney gets a monkey off his back and a fatter account and Dion loses any serious ammunition to use when the next election comes around.
And given the short memory span that the majority of Canadians who might consider voting have, the odds are we'll be stuck with the same set of moronic right wing nut jobs.
E.
Mulroney has never testified in court about anything to do with the airbus dealings.
He has always fought tooth and nail to avoid testifying on the public record. The last round, where the Liberals paid out a $2 million settlement to him was negotiated.
In other words, there is no sworn testimony on this matter. Even if there really is nothing, I'd like to see it on the public record - anything else smacks of not just secrecy, but crooked dealings.
Yes, you're right, I stand corrected. But as you can see the 'perception' most people (including myself) have is that he got away with it, and now appears to repeat the mess, at our expense, again.
Yes, he should be made to testify and that way we will have it on public record, one way or another.
E.
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