Feb 23 (Angus Reid) Canadians Send Mixed Messages on Emerson
62 per cent of respondents think Emerson should immediately resign his seat in the House of Commons and run in a by-election.
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,000 Canadian adults, conducted from Feb. 7 to Feb. 9, 2006. Margin of error is 3.1 per cent.
Democracy Watch: Stephen Harper Breaks Pledge to Close Five Loopholes in Ethics Rules
The third broken promise was the failure to close the loophole that allows ministers to handle files and vote on matters that are connected to their business interests. In fact, this loophole was left untouched by the Prime Minister, and creates an opening for party-switching International Trade minister to handle the softwood lumber file even though he has a conflict of interest based upon his retirement pension plan with Canfor Corporation, the forestry company he headed up until he became an MP in June 2004. Democracy Watch, February 22, 2006
Media Highlights for Wednesday February 22, 2006 – David Emerson
OTTAWA —A handful of civil servants have been dispatched to Vancouver in an unusual move that allows Trade Minister David Emerson to receive transition briefings while he weathers a political storm in his riding.
At least seven high-ranking bureaucrats from the Department of International Trade have joined Emerson since he left Ottawa while under fire for switching parties immediately after the election, The Canadian Press has learned.
Emerson had been avoiding the national media for days and went home while many of his constituents clamoured for a by-election.
Government officials could not put a price tag on the travelling transition briefings.
Emerson has received briefings in his regional office from deputy minister Rob Fonberg, as well as several assistant deputy ministers and other top-level staff.
”It will cost something, I’m sure,’’ one government official said.
(Emerson, with no mandate from the people, is hiding from us. The people are not well served by a cabinet minister in-hiding – its long past time for Emerson to resign!)
Feb 22 (Don Martin, National Post) PM can’t keep blaming messenger
OTTAWA – It’s about communications, stupid.
This Prime Minister is the real director of communications. And a very bad one at that.
Consider the alleged offence that ultimately triggered Stairs’s dismissal by a peeved PMO.
Stairs thought the backlash against former Liberal Cabinet minister David Emerson’s defection to the Conservative front bench was dragging on longer than necessary because the besieged minister was evasive or missing at the microphone.
Staging a phone-in news conference by Emerson to deal head-on with the aftershocks of his floor-crossing was Stairs’s idea. Cancelling it half an hour after its scheduled start, ostensibly because the minister was trapped in heavy traffic while sitting inside his own office, was Harper’s doing.
Talk about grade school tactics! Continuing on with the theme, yesterday during a ‘Media Availability’ to announce Harper’s appointment of the new Clerk of the Privy Council, a reporter (I believe it was CBC‘s Julie Van Dusen) commented on the invisibility of the Prime Minister and even more so, Cabinet Ministers, since the election, and asked if he planned to change that. Harper grumped back “I will be available when I have something to announce”.
Feb 22 (John Geddes, Macleans) The old switcheroo
Emerson’s defection could hurt Stronach’s chances – Here’s one for the crackpot conspiracy theorists out there. Stephen Harper huddles with a few advisers to pick his cabinet. The prospect of David Emerson crossing from the Liberals to the Conservatives comes up. But won’t appointing a blatantly opportunistic turncoat, the Prime Minister asks, spark wide public outrage? Sure, says a savvy backroom boy, but that’s the beauty part—naming Emerson will generate so much resentment around floor-crossing that it’ll foul up any chance Belinda Stronach has of winning the Liberal leadership.
(What a moronic premise – its surprising to find this published in a national magazine, but then again the few dentist’s patients reading it two years from now will be too apprehensive to notice.
There are many problems with this foolish bit but I’ll only discuss two. First of all, Harper would no doubt love to go up against Stronach. Secondly, even if we were to dismiss the social policy differences which made Stronach’s move ultimately acceptable – to her constituents – the bottom line remains that Stronach has since been given a mandate, as a Liberal, by her constituents. In contrast, Emerson gave the voters of this riding the finger. A very Trudeau-esque move, eh?)
Feb 22 (Sun Media) Insider claims PM wants to control PR
OTTAWA—Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants to run his own public relations show and the sudden firing of William Stairs on Monday night was proof of that, according to a Tory source.
[William] Stairs, Harper’s communications director, was dumped after arguing with the PM and his inner circle for a more open approach when handling such hot potatoes as the appointment of David Emerson to cabinet.
Feb 22 (John Slykhuis, YorkRegion.com) OK, so when are we going to elect worthy leader?
…One letter writer even demanded an apology for my being critical of Ms Stronach’s treachery, concluding with astounding mind-reading skill, I approve of the double standard before I had a chance to opine about it.
Well, I don’t. And, anyway, I never apologize for expressing an opinion. I think Mr. Emerson’s display of crass political opportunism is as egregious as Ms Stronach’s, and Mr. Harper’s approval of it as cynical as that of former prime minister Paul Martin.
Great way to start a new era of political openness and honesty, Prime Minister Bonehead.
Yesterday when this hit the press I next expected to see an apology from MacKay. Right on time:
MacKay apologizes for raising hopes of hostages’ families
CBC News – Wed, 22 Feb 2006 11:28:54 ESTForeign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay has apologized to the families of the two Canadian hostages being held in Iraq after suggesting he had new information about their fate.
MacKay told reporters on Monday he was confident the hostages were alive and would be released soon, and that he believed they had been moved several times.
The next day, he told reporters he had no new information since a video was released three weeks ago that indicated they were alive and well.
MacKay was criticized for speculating publicly about their welfare in a way that could raise the hopes of relatives of the hostages, and for making comments that might further endanger the hostages. More >
Given the daily news out of Iraq, most of which never makes it in front of the TV-viewing public’s eyes, its hard to believe that things could get any worse. And then it does.
Blast Destroys Golden Dome of Sacred Shiite Shrine in Samarra (NY Times)
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 22 – Insurgents dressed as police commandos detonated powerful explosives on Wednesday morning inside one of Shiite Islams most sacred shrines, destroying most of the building, located in the volatile town of Samarra, and prompting thousands of Shiites to flood into streets across the country in protest.
The golden-domed shrine housed the tombs of two revered leaders of Shiite Islam and symbolized the place where the Imam Mahdi, a mythical, messianic figure, disappeared from this earth. Believers in the imam say he will return when the apocalypse is near, to cleanse the world of its evils.
Juan Cole, Professor of History at the University of Michigan, writes extensively on Iraq and Middle Eastern issues. If you feel under-informed on the subject, his daily weblog postings will advance your knowledge substantially.
Cole is unusually sombre today.
Tuesday was an apocalyptic day in Iraq. I am not normally exactly sanguine about the situation there. But the atmospherics are very, very bad, in a way that most Western observers will miss.
The day started out with a protest by ten thousand people in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, against the Danish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. These days, Shiites are weeping, mourning and flagellating in commemoration of the martyrdom of the Prophet’s grandson, Imam Husayn. So it is an emotional time in the ritual calendar. when feelings can easily be whipped up about issues like insults to the Prophet. An anti-Danish demonstration in Karbala is a surrogate for anti-American and anti-occupation sentiment. The US won’t be able to stay in Iraq without increasing trouble of this sort.
Then guerrillas set off a huge bomb in a Shiite corner of the mostly Sunni Arab Dura quarter of Baghdad, killing 22 and wounding 28. Another 9 were killed in other violence around Iraq. These attacks are manifestations of an unconventional civil war.
Then real disaster struck. The guerriillas blew up the domed Askariyah shrine in Samarra. The shrine, sacred to Shiiites, honors 3 Imams or holy descendants of the Prophet. They are Ali al-Hadi, Hasan al-Askari, and his disappeared son Muhammad al-Mahdi. Thousands of Shiiites demonnstrated in Samarra and in East Baghdad, against this desecration.
The Twelfh Imam or Mahdi is believed by Shiites to have disappeared into a supernatural realm (just as Christians believe in the ascension of Christ) from which he will someday return.
Some Shiites think his second coming is imminent. Muqtada al-Sadr and his followers are among them. They are livid about this attack on the shrine of the Mahdi’s father.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is also a firm believer in the imminent coming of the Mahdi. I worry that Iranian anger will boil over as a result of this bombing of a Shiite millenarian symbol.
Both Sunnis and Americans will be blamed. Very bad
Western news has covered the story superficially so far. I guess we’ll see more coverage when the reprisals are distinguishable from the usual daily violence in Iraq.
To put this in context, what, do you think, the western reaction would be if the birthplace of Jesus was bombed or if the Wailing Wall or the Church of the Holy Sepulcher were destroyed?