A rchive Date
[ 04-06-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/weston.html
Headed for a showdown
The Chretien-Martin feud is boiling down to a fight, one that will play out at the riding level as the two sides jockey for position in advance of the prime minister's leadership review
By GREG WESTON - Sun Media
June 4, 2002
It is a Saturday afternoon in November, 1986, and a prominent Liberal party organizer is sitting in a hotel room with a view of Parliament Hill, handing out wads of $20 bills to young Grits promising to vote for John Turner's continued leadership.
The months leading up to the vote of confidence in Turner's leadership have been an ugly rat-fight between a group of Turner loyalists and an underground movement of palace plotters led by supporters of Jean Chretien.
And now, in the final hours before the ballots are counted, it had come down to this - wads of $20s. Just for expenses, of course.
Welcome to the politics of leadership, Liberal-style, an exercise in backroom gerrymandering about to be played out once again, this time with Chretien's leadership scheduled to be put on the line at a party convention in February.
Today, the guy cutting up the cash for Turner in 1986 is a federal cabinet minister fighting on behalf of Chretien.
And if the firing of Paul Martin as Canada's finance minister is any indication of how low Chretien's crowd is prepared to go, this leadership brawl could set a whole new standard for dirty tactics and outright nastiness.
Manitoba Liberal MP John Harvard, ordinarily a discreet and faithful soldier for the prime minister, stepped up to the microphones yesterday and all but called on Chretien to consider quitting, rather than dragging the party through a divisive leadership review process.
"I want him to take a look at this issue that is in front of us, and make the best possible decision," Harvard said outside the Commons. "And if there is some way he can avoid this process, so much the better."
Harvard, chairman of Chretien's caucus of western MPs, expressed what seems to be a growing sense of trepidation throughout the Liberal ranks, telling reporters a leadership review would be "a very difficult process.
"I'm worried sick, and I don't want to go through with this," he said.
The prime minister evidently shares the sentiment. As he faced reporters Sunday afternoon for the first time since firing Martin, the PM immediately bemoaned the whole idea of his having to face a leadership review.
But Chretien isn't concerned about what a leadership vote might do to the party - he's worried about losing it. Why should his leadership be challenged at all, he asked, when Canadians had given him a five-year mandate in the last election just 18 months ago?
Within minutes of the PM's comments, his spin doctors were planting the idea the party should simply dispense with the leadership vote, and let Chretien decide when he wants to leave.
Liberal party insiders say Chretien's officials are now exploring various legal and other possible ways to kill next year's vote outright, or at least delay it long enough to thwart Martin's leadership ambitions. Neither is likely to happen.
The Liberal party's constitution stipulates a leadership review has to be held within two years of an election, a deadline Chretien's backers will have already stretched four months by next February.
Similarly, any move by Chretien to eliminate the review process completely would touch off a major revolt among the fiercely autonomous provincial Liberal organizations that make up the national party.
Finally, Martin holds one hammer so powerful it is almost unthinkable he would ever use it - if even a fraction of the MPs supporting him decided to sit out votes in the Commons, Chretien would lose his majority.
The most likely scenario is that both the Martin and Chretien forces will spend the summer organizing at the riding level, trying to ensure the eventual delegate selection process is stacked in their respective favour.
Martin goes into the process with the support of a majority of sitting MPs, who also control their riding associations.
Chretien enters the fray also heavily armed with both cabinet support, and all the levers of power that go with his leadership of the party and the government.
Some time before Christmas, Chretien will look at the results of delegate selections and the public opinion polls to decide whether to fight a review vote, or exit gracefully.
Now is definitely the time for all good Liberals to come to the aid of their party - and the country.
Greg Weston is Sun Media's national political columnist, his columns appear Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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