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Tuesday, February 17, 2004
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THE FALL AND DECLINE OF THE MARTIN EMPIRE
Paul Martin has been Prime Minister of Canada for all of two months now. For my foreign readers, I should explain Canada's political situation over the course of the last 11 years. There was a time when Canada had a Prime Minister named Brian Mulroney. All Canadians, young and old hated Mulroney. Accordingly, we gave him the two largest majority governments in Canadian history, in 1984 and 1988. Then he did something (institute a national sales tax) that pissed off everybody. So we had to bring him down to size. Mulroney was smart enough to get the fuck out of Dodge while the getting was good and resigned in February 1993. Mulroney remains so unpopular that I'm the only person in Canada willing to admit having voted for him.
The horrid mark of Cain then fell upon Mulroney's successor, Canada's first (and thus far,only) female Prime Minister, The insanely inept Kim Campbell. Mulroney's party, the Progressive Conservatives were destroyed. Americans, in particular, can't understand the savagery of the bloodletting. The Progressive Conservative party went from 188 seats in parliament.......to 2. In the course of one night, the party went from having the second largest parliamentary caucus in Canadian history to one you could fit in a telephone booth. At least Campbell was able to maintain her sense of humor in this, the time of historically unprecedented humiliation. Her concession speech began with the line, "It's a good thing I didn't sell my car...."
The reign of Jean ChreteÃn (1993-2003) was a a period of almost criminal insanity unseen outside of Germany since the days of Caligula. His Liberal party government turned out to be the most fiscally conservative in Canadian history since the Greatdepressionn. Chretien was allowed to escape from being held against his will under the Mental Health Act of Ontario by virtue of there being being no opposition party on the federal scene. A large part of the reason of the Liberal's ass-kickingascendancyy , other than utter disgust with Mulroneyamongg the voters, was the utter disgust with the Mulroneyamongg Progressive Conservatives. Before the 1993 election, the Tories split three ways. The Reform (later the Canadian Alliance) Party rose in Western Canada and the the seperatist Bloc Quebecois splintered from the West In Quebec. The Progressive Conservatives still ran candidates in every riding in Canada.
Had the votes of Reform, the BQ and the Tories been combined, the Liberals would've been destroyed. Three times in a row, they would've been beaten. Insted, Chretien became the first Liberal to form three consecutive majority governments since the Second World War.
As is true with unchallenged power, it's handmaiden, corruption soon made an appearence. Repeaedly. During the 2000 campaign, the Liberals using the Ministry of Public Works, rewarded it's political allies in Quebec with public funds. Once the scandal was uncovered in the media, the Minister, Alfonso Gagliano, was forced to resign. Well, not exactly resign....he resigned from cabinet and was made Ambassador to Denmark.
Last week, the Auditor General, Shelia Fraser, released her report on the scandal. Between 1997 and 2001, some $100 million went into a partisan, Liberal sinkhole in Montreal. Chretien,who retired last December, was out of the country. The firestorm fell unto the new Prime Minister, Paul Martin, who had barely spoken to Chretien in years. Martin was, after all, the Minister of Finance, the second most powerful man in government.
Martin, who not three months ago, was possessed of Yaweh like popularity, has seen his approval numbers fall apart. In less than a month, the Liberals have dropped 13 points. While this is not enough to topple the government, it is enough to drive it to minority status. This would mean that the Liberals would be forced into a coalition with the socialist NDP lest they be defeated in a vote of confidence the second they stepped intoparliamentt, forcing yet another election.
Until this week, the Liberals had planned on exploiting Martin's personal popularity and calling an election at the earliest possible date, so confident were they of success. Those plans appear to be on indefinate hold. The polling suggests that if an election is called while questions about the conduct of Public Works in Quebec are outstanding, the Prime Minister will be held personally responsible.
The anger of the country is so intense that the main beneficiary of it appears to be the Conservative Party. The Conservatives were established only in December, the result of the PCs and the Canadian Alliance merging. The Conservatives as yet have no leader and no platform. Yet Canadian are so disgusted with this government, in office slightly more than three months, that are increasingly willing to vote for a completely unknown commodity. This is unprecedented in Canadian history.
Canadian elections are usually staid, boring affairs. More often than not, the elections are decided on themes rather than issues. Martin, the annointed messiah of the Liberal party is in serious trouble. While he is almost certainly blameless in the Public Works scandal, is powerless to stop it's momentemum. If he moves against the Chretien loyalists that are at fault, he will further inflame the party's ongoing civil war. If, however, he doesn't go after the Chretienites, he risks the building wrath of the general public who have, at long last, grown weary of Liberal corruption and arrogance.
The next few months are going to be fun.
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