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?
