Major Acid's E-Rag
It Strikes Me...
Mr Chretien
Taking shots at politicians is something of a national pastime in Canada. That is one of the benefits of being Canadian. You can�t do that as freely in many, if not most, other countries.
Even in the United States, at least for a while after 9-11, it was chancy to make fun of President Bush. To do so was labeled unpatriotic. One couldn�t comment, for example, about his apparent cowardice during the 9-11 attacks. Maybe it was his aides panicking who kept the President flying around in (and, at least figuratively, hiding under the seats of) Air Force One. There has since been a determined effort to rehabilitate that sad moment, apparently in the belief that Mr Bush could be made to seem like Harrison Ford as the President in the Hollywood version of Air Force One, and apparently in the belief that Americans would buy the image.
In Canada, we have Jean Chretien, but he doesn�t have a plane. He has a wife. If you recall (and the Liberal pr flacks don�t want you to recall) after an intruder somehow found his way past the Mounties to happily wander around 24 Sussex Drive, it was apparently Aline Chretien who left the bedroom for a look-see while the Prime Minister hid (at least figuratively) under the covers.
That was a while ago, and people have pretty much forgotten the incident. We have far more recent, and far more troubling, concerns about Mr Chretien to occupy our time. He is, after all, our very first, homegrown Canadian dictator.
Mr Chretien is in control of political power in Canada, and no one can make him give it up. He has said he will retire, but he hasn�t gone away. And no one can make him go away.
He has been busy making policy for which he is totally unaccountable, and he is unaccountable because he won�t be going back to the polls again. At least if we believe him. He has said he will retire, but he has a history of lying to us all: GST � free trade � take your pick. Meanwhile he has been busy determining how the country will spend its tax dollars for the next half-decade or so, something a Prime Minister is usually accountable for at election time.
But Mr Chretien won�t be around at election time, unless he is so truly consumed with hatred for Paul Martin that he campaigns against the man. It would be covert, of course. I would not be even the tiniest bit surprised if, in the middle of the next federal election (whenever it finally gets here) a strange story surfaces, one that says Mr Chretien feels that Mr X (pick a political party leader, possibly even Gilles Duceppe!) would make a better PM than Mr Martin.
Disavowals would follow, with the requisite sly winks.
In the meantime, Mr Chretien plays at being a dictator. He can do literally anything. His party can�t get rid of him. No doubt the backroom boys paid a visit urging early exit, and no doubt Mr Chretien told them something impolite in turn. Even after the Liberals elect a new leader-in-waiting, Mr Chretien will still be the PM. He will still be actively trying to change the system of how politics is done in this country, and he can do so with impunity because he will not be running for election again.
He can tinker with the Senate. He can change fundraising rules for federal political parties across the land. He can tie up billions and billions of Canadian tax dollars in any way he wants. And no one can stop him.
That is a dictator.
True, he is a piker next to Robert Mugabe or Crown Prince Abdullah or Muamar Ghaddafi or The Dear Leader or any other dictator you care to mention, say Charles Taylor of Liberia.
Mr Chretien and Mr Taylor are rather similar in some respects. Both have said they will go, but they aren�t saying when. Mr Chretien could go this fall, or maybe next winter, or � well, who knows. Mr Taylor has accepted asylum in Nigeria and he will go � well, who knows.
Both of them are low on the list of the Americans, too, although being low on George Bush�s list of favourite people can be interpreted in other ways than as being a bad thing. The most striking parallel, however, is that both Mr Chretien and Mr Taylor are so low on Mr Bush�s list � and considered so unimportant � that he can�t really be bothered to do anything about them.
Mr Bush may send some troops to Liberia. He has already sent troops to the Canadian border, disguised as border patrol agents fresh from the endless, low-level Mexican/US border war. But mostly he doesn�t seem to care.
We can�t do much about Mr Taylor, but maybe there is something we can do about Mr Chretien � at least maybe we should try. It seems to me that what Mr Chretien is doing is counter to anything resembling the concept or representative democracy that he is supposedly the Canadian exemplar of.
Yes, he was once elected, and yes, he is the Prime Minister legitimately, but once he made the choice to leave office (if we believe him) he was bound � by moral considerations if not explicitly legal ones � to behave as what he had become: a caretaker.
By ceding his place at the polls, he ceded his right to make significant changes to Canadian political life.
Mr Chretien would disagree, of course. He would say that he is doing his job, that he is acting in the best interests of all Canadians. Mr Taylor claims to be acting in the interests of peace, too.
I don�t often wish to be a lawyer, but right now I do. I think that if I were a lawyer I would go to whichever court I could find and ask for an order requiring Mr Chretien to cease and desist in all actions that cannot reasonably be considered as appropriate to his position as a caretaker Prime Minister. I�d do it myself, if there is a lawyer out there willing to offer a little pro bono advice on the technical aspects.
There isn�t anything at stake except ridding Canada of the worst excesses of our first homegrown dictator. Any takers?
