Talk about spiteful. Just as Paul Martin thought he was distancing himself from the adscam scandal, Jean Chretien’s lawyers filed a challenge in Federal Court to the Gomery Inquiry’s findings that laid the blame at Chretien’s feet. This, on the very first full day of the election campaign. It seems there is no limit to the spite that Chretien feels toward his successors who have taken control of the Liberal Party after his retirement. It’s what Mr. Justice John Gomery accurately called "small town cheap", when he commented on Chretien’s spending taxpayer money to have his name imprinted on golf balls.
But on the whole, I think it’s a good thing that Chretien and his lawyers filed the challenge when they did, as it is a reminder to voters that Judge Gomery’s absolution of Paul Martin notwithstanding, it’s the same Liberal Party that’s running for re-election today.
Of course, Chretien’s lawyers claimed that the timing of their filing the challenge was co-incidental, as they were slow in completing the work needed to file. From what I know about Chretien, who has prided himself in being a "street fighter", there was nothing accidental in the unfortunate date chosen to file the challenge. I believe what’s closer to the truth is that Chretien is waging a "scorched earth" campaign of revenge against his old party because he is terminally unhappy about his ignominious exit from politics.
Chretien’s submission to the court claims that Judge Gomery was biased against him and calls the findings of the report "erroneous, perverse, capricious" and "contrary to uncontradicted evidence". These are strong words coming from someone whose recent past is a décolletage of shady dealings, starting with the squashing of the Somalia Inquiry, the aPEC pepper spraying incident, the billion dollar HRDC "boondoggle", the Grand Mere Inn debacle and finally adscam.
Jean Chretien might think that his tenure as prime minister has added respectability to his persona. I am personally of the opinion that his name has besmirched the office of prime minister.
While I laud Judge Gomery’s forthrightness in laying blame, I am nevertheless suspicious of the entire adscam Inquiry for a number of reasons.
The first is, as Paul Martin never tires of telling the voters, that he appointed Judge Gomery to head the inquiry. While I do not wish to besmirch the reputation of Mr. Gomery, I am given to wonder how and why his findings so clearly exonerate Martin and the rest of the cabinet and totally lay the blame at Chretien’s door. Given the fact that Martin and Chretien have hated each other’s guts for years it’s just a trifle too pat for my taste.
Second, why is it that no one in the Liberal Party has been charged with any crime, given that the adscam scandal has been public for over two years? So far, there have only been charges laid against Paul Coffin (who copped a sweetheart plea) and Chuck Guite, who it seems, is going to take the major fall. Paul Martin keeps talking about how the RCMP is investigating the affair and he expects that there will be more criminal charges as a result of this investigation. I am leery of the RCMP"s investigatory prowess, given their fine work in the Grand mere Inn affair. There has been testimony that Joe Morselli, a close friend of alfonse "the ambassador" Gagliano, allegedly threatened Daniel Dezinde, former Director General of the Liberal Party’s Quebec wing. I know that if I threatened someone today and the cops found out about it, they’d be visiting me with an arrest warrant tomorrow.
Third, if Paul Martin was really as out of the loop as he claims to have been, wasn’t he even a little curious when he thanked Morselli for raising $600,000 for the Liberals from Quebec ad agencies at a cocktail party? after all, Martin was minister of finance and one would assume he’d be interested in how the money was raised.
Chretien is unknowingly rendering the country a favor by keeping the adscam affair on the front burner. The voters need to be reminded every day that it isn’t just Chretien who is contemptuous of them. It’s the entire party.